Let us hear this good news about Jesus from our story in Mark 7 today, and hold onto it relentlessly together, dear church family.  “He has done all things well!”  Jesus has done all things well.  Jesus does all things well.  Jesus will do all things well.

Let us hold onto this as we continue to consider the question “What does it mean to follow the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth?”  He has done everything well.  Let us hold onto this, particularly when things get difficult.  We’re looking again at two stories this morning, and the first one is difficult.  It’s been said that it seems like Jesus is being a little mean here!  There is no easy answer, although it is good to remember that Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman is at heart not an encounter between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman but an encounter between God and humanity.  Our walk with Jesus can be a struggle (God changed Jacob’s name to Israel which literally means “he struggles with God); particularly when things vex or perplex us.  When we wonder “Why?” 

Our “Why?” questions about God might go unanswered.  The question for us is “Are we ok with that?”  Are we ok with a story in which Jesus seems to give a rather mean answer?   “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Commentators have looked at this first story and talked about the twinkle that must have been in Jesus’ eye, or the gentle way in which he must have said these things, or the fact that he’s using the diminutive of dog (so it’s more like puppy) if this makes it easier to take. 

What is going on here?

In the middle of struggle, are we prepared to trust?  In the middle of struggle, are we going to trust that Jesus does all things well?  In these Eastertide weeks, we’re going back to Galilee to meet him.  To watch Jesus and to listen to Jesus.  Let’s come before God in prayer as we look at the stories that are before us today.

I’m talking about going back to Galilee, though in our first story, we’re actually in Tyre, where Jesus meets this unnamed Greek/Syrophoenician woman.  Jesus heads northwest into Gentile territory.  Tyre and Sidon.  Two towns on the Mediterranean coast in what is modern-day Lebanon. Jesus is crossing boundaries figuratively and literally.  We don’t know why he went.  It may be that he wanted to rest in a place where he would not be as well known.  Yet he could not escape notice.

“…but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.”  The woman’s daughter was in the grip of something that was beyond her control.  In Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ followers are at times not to be taken as examples of faith – slow to understand, quick to criticize, quick to judge, as we are.  Here, though, we have a woman who is an example of faith.  One of the little people, as she’s been called.  Thank God for the so-called little people who have been around us and are around us now as examples of great faith.  She holds a position of relentless dependence on Jesus.  “Lord help us to be relentlessly dependent on you.” May this be our prayer.  She doesn’t make any presumptions. She doesn’t make any claim on Jesus.  Matthew records her plea as this – “Lord help me.”  Surely this is one of the most simple and most profound prayers there are. She is persistent.  She throws herself at Jesus’ feet in a gesture of both repentance and sorrow.  She doesn’t presume that she has to do something or promise something to get the help that she needs.  She doesn’t presume that she has to say the right words in the proper order. She simply comes to the one who does all things well.

Who gives her an answer that might be considered unexpected at best, insulting at worst.  “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  Jesus is speaking in a kind of parable here of salvation history, or of how God was accomplishing the saving/delivering/healing/restoring of all things.  This was being done through the nation of Israel (as had been promised to Abraham) in the person of Jesus, who would save and redeem and show mercy and forgive and give light and guide feet in the way of peace.  It is a matter of chronology and not exclusivity.  As Paul puts it in Rom 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”  Chronology is not a matter of exclusivity, and neither is it a matter of priority.  Even in God’s first delivering event – the Exodus, the delivering of God’s people from subjugation in Egypt – we read “The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children. A mixed crowd also went up with them, and livestock in great numbers, both flocks and herds.” (Ex 12:37-38)  Outsiders were even then taking part in God’s delivering action (animals too).

I must pause here and say something about God’s saving work (delivering, renewing, restoring, life-giving work).  Would anything about God’s delivering work offend us?  This is a difficult encounter, and the question for us is, is there anything about God’s delivering work for us that would be too much for us?  Are there people or groups of people who we would judge to be undeserving of God’s grace (of God’s unmerited favour and goodness)?  There’s a scene in Exodus 33 where God is going to pass before Moses.  Moses asks to see God’s glory.  God tells Moses he’ll pass by him, but first God will place Moses in a cleft in a rock and cover Moses with his hand so that Moses will be able to take it.  God’s care and grace!  Listen to what God says, in Ex 33:19 “I will make my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name ‘The Lord’: and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.”  Are we ok with that?  Are we ok with trusting the goodness of the one who does all things well?

Getting back to the animals now, we have this difficulty of Jesus comparing this Syrophoenician woman to a dog.  We may react to this in different ways, as I said earlier.  Dogs were not thought of as members of the family in those days.  There were no Pet Smarts or pictures with Santa.  Was this remark out of character for Jesus?  Who am I to say what is out of character for Jesus?  Who are any of us to say what is out of character for God, who is gracious to whom He will be gracious and who will show mercy on whom He will show mercy?

We may react in different ways to this scene.  It’s important to remember, as I said earlier, that this is at heart an encounter between humanity and God. Look at how this faithful woman reacts.  She does not walk away in a huff and swear never to speak to this man again.  She does not reject him for his answer.  Gentiles were known to have dogs in their households, and perhaps Jesus’ use of the “puppy” form of dog here reminds this woman of a pet and a household scene, which reminds us all of a deep truth about God.  “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  Jesus hadn’t said, after all, that the dogs wouldn’t ever be fed, just not first.  This woman brings nothing of herself to this encounter with Jesus except her need for him and her trust in his goodness.  Someone has put it like this, “Even when rebuffed, she didn’t sulk or storm off, declaring God uncaring and cruel. Moreover, she showed no sense of entitlement, no expectation that Jesus should heal her daughter. On the contrary, she appealed for mercy. And owing her nothing, Jesus extended grace.”  She persisted.  She showed relentless faith.  Trusting that even crumbs of grace would be enough.

We may find ourselves in a situation that is beyond us.  We may find ourselves in such a situation soon.  We may have people in our circles of love and care who find themselves in such a situation.  How do we live in such a situation?  To whom do we go for help?  Even in the face of unexpected answers from God or difficulty in seeing God’s goodness in the face of difficulty.  Living in the expectation of a promise of goodness, knowing that even crumbs will sustain.  Holding onto the belief that no matter the outcome, God is good.  Having faith.  Trusting.  Believing that Jesus is who he says he is and will do what he says he will do.  Trusting that God’s will for us is nothing but goodness.  Trusting in relentless dependence on him. Relentless dependence from this faithful woman who doesn’t ask for a sign or an explanation from Jesus when he says her daughter has been freed, but simply goes home and finds the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

Jesus returns from Tyre by way of Sidon and ends up in the region of the Decapolis – another Gentile region on the east side of the Sea of Galilee.  Here we have another story of God’s promise fulfilled.  I like to tell children about God’s faithfulness with this explanation.  When God makes a promise, he keeps it.  Even when we are waiting for the fulfillment of a future promise, God’s goodness is with us.  Do you know God’s goodness?  Can you hear it?  Can you speak of it? Jesus will help.  “He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”  Listen to these lines from Isaiah 35, promising the return of the exiled to Zion.  The promise of deliverance is here in the person of Jesus.  “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” (Is 35:5-6a)

“They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech, and they begged him to lay his hand on him.”  We don’t know who these people are, but Martin Luther had this to say about them (and to us) –  “They do not need this work themselves, nor do they look to themselves, but to the poor man, and think how they may help him; they seek no reward but act independently and freely. Thus, you should by right do likewise; if not, you are no Christians.”  There you go.

Jesus takes the man away from the crowd and, in private, puts his fingers into his ears.  Note Jesus’ care here.  Jesus’ bedside manner.  The man can’t hear, and Jesus is showing him what he is about to do, which is to enable the man to hear. Jesus spits and touches the man’s tongue to show that he is about to enable the man to speak.  Jesus sighs or groans, and we can’t hear this without thinking of all creation groaning, longing for renewal.  Jesus groans along with it here.   The renewal of all things is coming, and the renewal of all things has begun, and Jesus says “Ephphatha,” which means be opened and immediately his ears were opened, his tongue released, and he spoke plainly.  May this be our prayer.  Lord, open our ears, help us to tell plainly of you.  Signs of God’s love and renewal are breaking in all around us, often in the so-called little people.  They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well…”  New life is among us.  The goodness of God is among us.  Goodness, that astounds and astonishes if we have ears to hear, eyes to see, hearts to understand, tongues to tell and sing.  May God give us such ears, eyes, hearts and tongues.

May God give us thankful hearts as we come to his table today.  We’re not talking about only getting crumbs when we come to the Lord’s Table.  We’re talking about super-abundant grace.  God speaks in Psalm 81 about his people listening to his voice.  God says, “I would feed you with the finest of wheat.”  Everyone is welcome to the table through trust in Jesus, who has done all things well, who does all things well, and who will do all things well.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift of grace.

Amen

“Keep on believing,” says Jesus, and calls us daughter, son.

In this case, a daughter or a little girl.  A term of endearment.  Talitha.  Same root in Aramaic as the word for lamb.  Get up, little lamb.  Words this dear daughter would have heard every morning of her life, before she sprang out of bed to begin her day with a family who loved her.  Before desperation set in.  We will all know desperate times.  We may be living in them now.  We will know situations that are beyond our ability to control.  This is difficult because we like to be able to control our situations.  We invest money in RRSP’s and TSFA’s.  We try to eat well and exercise.  We send our kids to Kumon.  We buy a car with a high safety rating.  There’s nothing wrong with any of these things in and of themselves. It is important to know, however, that the control we may seek to manufacture is an illusion.  We’ll know desperate times. 

The good news is that we needn’t fear desperate times.  We are dealing with matters of life and light here – not falsehood and not escapism.  We’re not dealing with fiction.  Having said that, I do like good fiction and what it can teach us about life and the human condition in general.   Clare Messud is an American/Canadian/Australian author who had this to say about fiction – speaking out against fakery and falsehood in fiction. Speaking against fiction as escapism.  In an article entitled “Life is Damage – A Conversation With Clare Messud,” she said this: “Life is damage. Isn’t this true? An infant is born in its unique, idiosyncratic perfection, trailing clouds of glory, as Wordsworth put it, and life will batter like a relentless storm against that perfect being.”  Life will batter like a relentless storm, and if we haven’t yet known this, we will.

We don’t want to be about fakery, falsehood or escapism.  The word of God is not about fakery, falsehood, or escapism.  The ship of Life in which followers of Christ sail along together is not about fakery, falsehood or escapism.  Desperate times call for what?  In Jesus, we may even be bold enough to say that desperate times can be a gift. Desperate times may be the thing that makes us recognize our own inability to manage outcomes.  Desperate times call for reckless faith.  This response is not automatic, of course.  While we see people in Mark’s Gospel respond to Jesus in need and in trust, we see others who treat Jesus with indifference, rejection, scorn, even.  There are four miracle stories in Mark 4 and 5.  We looked at Jesus calming the sea back in Lent.  These stories take us to places beyond which it’s a matter of help from within ourselves.  They take us to places where only God could make the difference.  The power of the sea.  The power of demons.  Incurable illness.  Death.  How do we respond?  How do we go on?

How?  How do you go on?  It’s a good question.

In our story today, we are presented with the response of reckless faith.  The faith of a synagogue leader who sends for the man who has been performing acts of power in his town.  Jairus is willing to take the risk on a man who has been stirring up opposition, despite what this might mean in terms of his position and his rank.  Synagogue leader.  A man of some prestige and authority.  We tend to care about those kinds of things.  How people view us, etc.  We tend to care less when a child is dying.

You learn something about desperation and the lengths to which parents are willing to go in a children’s oncology ward.  I don’t know the experience as a parent of being desperate on behalf of a child but I experienced it as an uncle when our nephew was being treated for leukemia.  The feelings of helplessness.  The urgent prayers.  The parents who would go to any length just to be with their children.

“When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him, and he was by the sea.  Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death.  Come and lay your hands on her, so that she might be made well, and live.”  Jairus is desperate.  It’s been said that when you reach desperation, humility comes naturally.    C.S. Lewis said, “Pain plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul.”  This surely has something to teach us about prayer, too.  Jairus has fallen at Jesus’ feet and begs him repeatedly, “Lay your hands on her, so that she might be made well, and live.” Lay your hands on her, so that she might be saved, and live.  There is something going on here beyond a healing.  There is something going on beyond bringing back to life.  Again, we are dealing here with more than a healing.  There is a deeper truth about Jesus going on here, which we read in the repetition of this phrase “be made well,” “I will be made well,” and “your faith has made you well.”  The verb is Sozo, and it means more than being cured.  It’s often translated “save” in our Bible and speaks to the truth that, at times, is expressed by two words – “Jesus Saves.”  This word for saved speaks of healing, rescuing, preserving, delivering, making whole.  Jesus makes whole.  Jesus rescues.  Jesus delivers.  Jesus makes well.   Do we believe in new life?  Are we desperate enough to come to Jesus often and meaningfully and plead, “Give me new life?”  “Give us new life?”  trusting that we may know life no matter our circumstances?

Jairus falls at Jesus feet and pleads with him.  “My little daughter is at the point of death.  Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.”  So he went with him.  We don’t know what Jairus knew about Jesus.  We don’t know what Jairus believed about Jesus.  Now it is important to understand who Jesus is.  The life of following Jesus is one of coming to an ever-deeper heart understanding of what kind of King Jesus is.  It starts, though, with faith.  Simple trust.  Like a child.  A child can trust.  It starts with trusting that in Jesus, there is life.  Trusting.  Listening.  Watching.  Following.  An audacious faith that keeps on believing when we don’t have all the answers; when the way ahead is murky.  An audacious faith that has us continually throwing ourselves down at Jesus’ feet, pleading repeatedly.

Speaking of audacious faith, Jesus is about to be interrupted.  It’s amazing how much of Jesus’ ministry happened in the interruptions.  How much are we called to serve others – to show the grace and mercy of God – in interruptions?  Henri Nouwen quoted some wisdom he heard from a professor at one point – “I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted; then I realized that the interruptions were my work.”  “Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.  She had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had, and she was no better, but rather grew worse.”  This is no knock on the medical profession.  It’s a mark of this woman’s desperation.  Her financial resources are gone.  Constant bleeding would have left her ritually unclean, as every woman was ritually unclean during menstruation. (Someone has said that this is what happens when men make the rules. I will leave that with you.  She was an outcast socially speaking.  Others would need to avoid touching her, a bed where she had slept, a chair where she had sat.  She couldn’t take part in any religious ritual.  She was cut off in every way and without hope.   

She’s not without hope, though.  The thing is, you see, she had heard about Jesus.  “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”  If I but touch his clothes, I will be saved, healed, restored, forgiven, delivered, made whole.  Read v29-30.  “Who touched my clothes?” asks Jesus.  The disciples do not acquit themselves very well here.  What are you talking about?  Look at this crowd!  “He looked around to see who had done it.  But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling.” Why such fear? Awe and wonder in Jesus’ presence? Fear of disapproval from this teacher at what she had done?  She couldn’t go around touching people after all.  Disapproval from the crowd who might find out that an unclean woman had been in their midst, jostling them and so on?  How many others had she touched?  Why is Jesus so insistent on making this woman’s healing public knowledge?  Someone has put it like this: “What she has done needs to be exposed in the crowd, not because it was wrong, but because it was right. The crowd has not become unclean by her touch; instead, she has become clean by touching Jesus. The crowd needs to know that… This woman’s humiliation has been public knowledge; her healing must be public knowledge as well. Her public confession in the crowd and a pronouncement of full healing by Jesus facilitates a healing far beyond the physical problem. It has a social and spiritual dimension as well.”

Jesus calls her “Daughter.”  It’s a term of acceptance and endearment.  This woman, who has been cut off from a relationship, has been restored to a relationship.  “Your faith has made you well.”  Your faith has saved you, delivered you, healed you, restored you.  Her faith was the conduit through which Jesus’ saving power flowed.  “Go in peace.”  Literally “Go into or towards peace.”  And be healed of your disease.  Hopelessness is turned into wholeness.

Speaking of hopeless – “While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’  But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’”

Do not fear.  Keep on believing.  We’re reading this story on the other side of Easter.  We are Easter people in Christ.  We are resurrection people in Christ.  Even death, the last enemy, has been overcome.  What have we to fear? 

Jesus comes to the house, and the professional mourners laugh when he says, “She’s but sleeping.”  We can laugh, or we can get behind this man who is now saying “Talitha cum” or “Little girl, get up.”  We can get behind this man who brings new life.  “And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age).  At this, they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.”

Don’t tell anyone about this new life yet because it couldn’t be fully understood until after Jesus is crucified and raised.  This is not simply Jesus as a wonder worker.  This is a prelude to a resurrection that will come in Mark 16 that we celebrated on April 5^th and that we keep before us every day.  New life and Jesus’ presence with this little girl, and Jesus’ care, too. “Give her something to eat,” says Jesus.  Jairus’ daughter begins to participate in the new life that will come about in Jesus’ resurrection, just as followers of Christ begin to participate in the new life that is to come when all things are renewed. 

So we keep on listening to those words that are painted on our sail.  Do not fear, only believe.    Keep on trusting this Jesus whose authority is over all. Keep on trusting in full assurance that even in the face of death itself, the last word belongs to Jesus.  There’s a wonderful picture here of what every follower of Christ will experience.  Opening our eyes to Jesus’ face.  Family behind him just like these girls’ mother and father.  The communion of saints behind him, just like Peter, James and John in our scene.  Jesus’ voice saying, “Little one, get up.”  “My lamb, get up.”

This is our risen Jesus who is in the boat with us even now.  What then shall we fear?  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!

Amen 

There’s an Emily Dickinson poem #32 that goes like this:

It was too late for man, but early yet for God; Creation impotent to help, but prayer remained on our side.

How excellent the heaven, When earth cannot be had; How hospitable, then, the face Of our old neighbour, God!

In 1408, the committee in charge of the cathedral in Florence began a long-term decorative project which would see the cathedral’s roofline decorated with statues of Biblical and mythological figures.  The first two were a statue of Joshua, sculpted by Donatello, and one of Hercules, sculpted by Donatello’s student Agostino di Duccio. In 1464, Agostino was commissioned to sculpt a statue of David, and a block of marble was extracted from the Carrara quarry in Tuscany.  Agostino abandoned the project after only having roughed out the legs.  In 1476, another sculptor, Antonio Rossellino, was hired to take over the project.  He soon quit, citing the inferior quality of the marble.  With no one to sculpt it and being too expensive to throw away, the block of marble lay outside for 25 years.

In 1501, a 26-year-old artist was chosen and given two years to complete the work.  His name was Michelangelo.  He completed David in 1504.  This is what artist/writer Giorgio Vasari described the process like this -  “the bringing back to life of one who was dead.”

Do we believe in new life?  Do we believe in resurrection?  Do we believe in transformation?  Do we believe in renewal and restoration?  How do we live those beliefs?  How did Jesus live them?  We go back to Galilee today to hear the question “Why does he do that?”  In this case, eating with tax collectors and sinners.  Why does he do that?  Because Jesus is the embodiment of the Kingdom of God. Making the Kingdom of God known by what he’s doing and saying.  Those who follow him are called and enabled to do the same.

This morning, we again hear Jesus make the invitation. “Follow me.”  Repent and believe.  Turn and trust. He not only called sinners to repent/turn, he befriended them.  He didn’t reduce people to labels.  We might like the idea of a party.  We might like the idea of an exclusive party even better.  Humanity has a tendency to want to get together with like-minded people, people who think like us, act like us, believe like us, dress like us, and talk like us.  The problem today is probably not so much religious purity but the labels we assign based on socio-economic, ethnic, and political factors.  We might love the idea of a party, but it would be unthinkable to go to a party which was full of (woke liberals, or MAGA-heads, or sheep, or freedom-loving patriots, or immigrants, or Kens and Karens, or, or …) those people.  Whomever “those people” may be.

Jesus is walking along beside the lake, and we know what happens when Jesus walks along beside a lake (he gets to inviting).  As Jesus walks, there sits a tax collector.  Now here was the thing about tax collectors in 1st-century Galilee. They were despised.  Someone has compared them to the local Parking Authority.  Traffic cops who give out tickets and tows.  I used to watch Parking Wars on A&E (I went through a phase), and people would be yelling at these parking wardens out of the windows of their cars (mind you, this was Philadelphia).  These parking officials supported a regime that oppressed. Herod Antipas was the puppet king, installed by the Romans, who ruled in Galilee.  Tax collectors would be given a yearly target to hit.  Anything they could get over and top of their target was theirs.  (taxes like sales tax and tolls) Tax collectors of Jesus’ day charged whatever they thought they could get away with extra, so that they could skim off the top. One writer describes Levi’s situation like this: “We don’t know whether he’d chosen the job. Probably it was the only one he could find. We don’t know whether he approved of the Herodian family, and Antipas in particular; most ordinary Jews disliked and resented them, but they were in power, the Romans were backing them, and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it. But Levi, son of Alphaeus, had to sit there taking the anger and resentment into his own heart and soul…”

Is transformation possible?  Maybe Levi was used to cleaning off graffiti that some Zealot would paint on the outside of his tax booth – Traitor!  Scum!  Jesus doesn’t yell or abuse or say “How could you?” or even offer silent disapproval.  Jesus issues an invitation.  “Follow me.”  To follow him is to know forgiveness.  Forgiveness is on offer.  Like that block of marble in Florence abandoned in a churchyard, Levi has been sitting at his tax booth, exposed to the elements.  Forsaken.  Forgotten.  Jesus sees Levi not simply as a label or as a member of a despised and hopeless class, but as one who is made in the image of God and beloved by God; one to whom the invitation is always open.

“Follow me.”  Come along behind me.  Get behind this kingdom of God thing.  The invitation to follow is an offer of forgiveness that is always extended.

And he got up and followed him.  Levi was working for a man who claimed to be a king.  Now he’s going to be living for a different kind of king.  What’s the first thing they do?

Have a party.  Have a meal together.  Levi calls his friends together and says, “I want you to meet this Jesus.  I want you to meet this man who treated me like a person.  I want you to meet this man who extended a loving invitation when I was expecting what I got from everyone else – at worst, abuse and scorn, and at best, indifference.” 

“And as he sat (literally reclined and when you’re reclining at dinner in those days, that is a festive dinner, a festive special literally) at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples – for there were many who followed him.”  In Jesus’ culture, there was no greater way to identify with another person and solidify a relationship than to share a meal together.  It’s been the same in many cultures throughout history and is the same in many cultures today.  Would God help us recapture something of the significance of sharing meals together and how they solidify relationships?

So far, so good, but the conflict that arises here comes about because of the people with whom Jesus is sharing this meal. “When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, 'Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  The NEB translates this as “bad characters” and “bad company.”  Another translation is “outcasts.”  “Friends in low places,” if you like.  Associating with outcasts was not done by godly religious people.  How could he?

Jesus is doing more than preaching repentance to sinners – to people who are in need of him - he is befriending them.  This is the new situation that Jesus brings about.  The good news is love.  Someone has described the new thing that Jesus is bringing about here like this – “The love of Jesus for all kinds of sinners (outcasts), his initiative in seeking them, his giving them… acceptance, his desire to have close fellowship with them was a new and revolutionary element in religion and morals.”  Living in a right relationship with God (which will affect all our relationships) does not require us to make ourselves right with God or achieve some level of rightness before we come to him.  Transformation is not something we need to do to receive God’s grace – transformation is the result of having received God’s grace

“When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’”  We like to put labels on people in order to determine who are the outcasts and who are the incasts.  Who are the people that we can safely ignore?  Who are the respectable people that are deserving of our attention?  Perhaps we consider ourselves “the respectable ones.” How much human need does the label of “respectability” mask?

Now we’re in the realm of need, which brings us into the realm of Jesus – literally the realm, the kingdom of God, which is like a king who threw a wedding banquet for his son and said to his servants, “Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.”  Even “those people” – whoever they may be.  Our need for Jesus is all we need.  This is what time it is.  It’s kingdom time, and the doctor is in, and the doctor will see you now.  Jesus answers a question about eating with an answer about healing.  We remember Jesus answering a request for healing with forgiveness.  It’s kingdom time, and the doctor is in, and the doctor is making new.  The doctor is making whole.  The doctor is bringing new life.  There is little point in a doctor only keeping company with those who are healthy (preventative medicine aside).   “I have come not to call the righteous,” says Jesus and this cannot have been without irony because who among any of us is righteous in and of ourselves?  .  “I have come to call not the righteous,” says Jesus with a dose of heavy irony.  If you think we’ve made ourselves right with whatever god we worship, we don’t need anyone else after all.  The problem with self-righteousness is that it inevitably leads to the elevation of self.  When we’re elevated it becomes most easy to look down on others. “I’ve got it together – they should too,” or “I’ve got it together – good luck to them,” or whatever.  The only thing that is required of us is a recognition of our need for him.  So we pray, “Lord, I need You,” and “Lord help me.”

Let us continue to pray, “Lord help me to know my need for you.  Make me well.  Make me whole. Make me new.”   We acknowledge our need for God in a very practical/tangible way when we come to His table.  How wonderful that we had two opportunities last week here to come to the Lord’s table together.  We say, “Come to this table not because you are strong, but because you are weak.”  Every time we come to the Lord’s table, we come in our weaknesses.  Truly.  It can be a difficult thing for us to do.  We can be proud.  We’re more easily seen through than we know.  Think of job interviews where we’ve been told, “Turn your weaknesses into strengths.  Michael Scott had this exchange when interviewing David Wallace for a job at Dunder-Mifflin’s head office in New York City – “Why don’t I tell you what my greatest weaknesses are? I work too hard. I care too much, and sometimes I can be too invested in my job.” DW – “Okay, and your strengths?  MS – “Well, my weaknesses are actually my strengths.” DW – “Okay. Yes.  Very good.” Michael did not get the job.  Let us come to the table acknowledging where we need the doctor in our lives.  To eat at the table with Jesus is to be made whole.  This story is not simply about having a fun party (though there is joy at the kingdom party).  It’s also about Jesus issuing an invitation to turn, to trust, to be forgiven and to be made whole, to be transformed.

This leads us to what this story means to us about the tables that we eat at, the people whom we invite, and the invitations that we accept.  I’m talking about actually eating now.  Eating is the great equalizer.  It expresses a human commonality.  It’s something we all have to do.  Consider the question “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Consider the call on our lives collectively to be Christ’s body, to do Christ’s work in the world.  How are Jesus’ actions here reflected in our own lives?  Someone has put the question like this -  “What witness do meals in our churches and homes bear to Jesus’ teaching in word and deed about calling ‘outcasts' to himself through table fellowship?”  I leave that question before us all.  It’s wonderful that we’ve been invited into Church of the Holy Trinity on a Saturday afternoon and that we can set tables up so people can sit and eat together.  It’s wonderful that we’ve been able to share a meal after church at least once a month fairly consistently now for just over four years.  God willing, we’ll look forward to our church picnic, which is not far off now (along with warmer weather).  Who might we invite to share a meal with us there?  In our homes?  Out somewhere if that’s more our thing?  Let’s continue to ask those questions together as we continue to follow, to look to, to listen to our doctor, our Great Physician who’s made the way and who makes the way and who will make the way.  Thanks be to God for His Word.

Amen     

Musically, a song is unresolved when it doesn’t end with the tonic chord.  Here’s an example of a song we like at Blythwood called “Blessed Be the Name.”  We are expecting the A at the end.  We’re left hanging, as it were, on the D. We are left suspended. No resolution.

And I have to tell you, I love that kind of ending.  We are left in a state of expectancy, and this is a good state to be in.  To live in Christ is to live in a posture of expectancy.  It’s Easter Sunday, and we’ve heard Mark 16:1-8.  We said at the beginning of Lent, when we began our journey through Mark, that this passage is generally considered to be the original ending of Mark.  Whether Mark intended it this way or the ending was lost or destroyed somehow.  The other endings that we have in our Bibles are thought to be additions.  How could Mark have ended his good news with “and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid?”  We are going to see that this is not a problem.  There are many problems in this world, and you and I may have problems (well, I do anyway), but the original ending of Mark is not one of them.

On the day that Christ is raised, it’s not about an ending.  It’s never been about an ending.  About closure.  “He has been raised!” is the truth that we celebrate this day.  If we wanted it to be about closure, death would be the end. You can’t get much more closed than that.  You can’t get much more closed than a corpse in a sealed tomb.

It’s not about an ending.  Someone has said that the truth of the resurrection means that for the follower of Christ, nothing is ever the end.  To follow Christ means that it’s never been about and is never about an ending.  It’s always about expectancy.  This is the good news that Mark leaves us within 16:1-8.  This is where the story ended on Friday.  (15:44-47)  One could be forgiven for thinking it was the end.  Dead is dead after all.

These faithful women have never left Jesus.  We hadn’t heard very much about them until Friday.  Mark was focused on the 12 disciples and in the end, their failure.  We found this out, though, on Friday. (15:40-41) Thank God for faithful women.

16:1-2  A new day dawns.  Expect the day.  Expect light.  As an old song goes, Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.  (Ps 30:5)  The words echo down through the years, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. (Mal 4:2) We sing it every Christmas – Light and life to all he brings, ris’n with healing in his wings.  You shall go out leaping like calves from a stall (what a wonderful image for spring).  Expect the sun.  Expect the Son to bring about far more than we ever expected.  The women thought they would need to anoint Jesus’ body with spices.  This was something that was done to bodies to cover the smell of decomposition.  It was done for the benefit of others who would be using/visiting the tomb.  Even now, the women are serving.  They had heard Jesus say, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” (9:35) 

They’re making plans which will never have to come to fruition. They are asking a question, wondering about how something is going to happen – “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?”  They had no need to worry and no need to wonder how.  They hear and see good news.  16:4-6.

This is a story of death that does not end with death.  This is a story of human failure that need not end with failure.  We can assume that this young man is an angel, a messenger.  We can’t put the good news any more plainly.  “He has been raised!”  Jesus.  The Messiah.  The Christ.  The Son of Man.  The Son of God.  The King of kings.  He has been raised, and he has gone ahead to Galilee.  Jesus who faithfully follows God’s will even to death, and is exalted (lifted high) through suffering and through death to make the way for all things to be reconciled with God (brought back to God); Jesus who shows that the way to reconciliation is self-sacrificing other-serving love; the risen Jesus who has defeated death and the powers that would separate us from God.  In this Jesus, God has stepped radically and decisively into time and history in such a way that human existence has been always and forever transformed.

Death does not have the final say.  Failure need not have the final say.  He has been raised.  Look at the place where they laid him.  We’ve heard.  We’ve seen.  Now go and tell.  “But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” (16:7)

The women fail at this point.  “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” The women finally fail.  Terror and amazement seized them.    I read once that in the Irish language, one doesn’t say “I am said.”  One says, “Sadness is on me.”  It means that you’re not identified with the emotion, but that the emotion is on you at least for a while.  I think that’s good.  These women are not characterized by or to be identified by terror and amazement, but it has seized them.  They said nothing to anyone.  All disciples fail.  All disciples fail to speak or fail to act.  All disciples may be restored and renewed.  Even Peter.  Even me.  Even you.

So we come to the so-called problem of Mark’s ending.  The women are silent.  It’s ironic, really.  Jesus had spent a lot of time telling people not to speak of him earlier. “See that you say nothing to anyone” after a leper is cleansed. “He strictly ordered them that no one should know this,” after a dead girl is brought to life (a prelude to a resurrection).  Now’s the time to speak!  Tell!  Tell!  Go!  Tell!  People aren’t speaking!  There’s no problem here.  The women did not remain silent.  While it had fallen on them, terror was not their identity.  We don’t need a long ending to know that they did not keep silent.  We don’t need to look at Matthew, Luke and John to know that they did not keep silent.  Everything has happened just as Jesus told them.  Just as Jesus had promised.  The donkey colt last week.  The betrayal.  The handing over.  The death.  The resurrection.  You’ve heard me say that I know the truth of Jesus’ promises personally because I have known them in my life.  Promises of presence.  Promises of peace.  Promises of transformation, of new life.  Do you know what else he told them?  He said, “You will all become deserters.” (14:27)  You will all fail me.  He doesn’t leave it there, though, or say “Bunch of no goods.”  He says, “But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.” (14:27)  Our failure is not the end because there is the promise of restoration.  The promise of renewal.  Jesus told his followers of a time to come when they would be handed over to councils and beaten and brought to governors and kings because of him.  He told them of a time when they were not to worry about what to say, but to say whatever is given to them to say because it will be the Holy Spirit speaking.  The women did not remain silent.  The disciples did not remain silent.

But we end with the suspension.  We can be ok with that.  The thing about suspension is that it leaves you expecting something.

As followers of Christ, we are called to live in a permanent state of expectancy.  Of hope.  Of the confident expectation of the goodness of God.  It’s the opposite of “same old same old” or even worse despair – the complete and utter absence of the hope of anything good.  We may like all loose ends tied up, “and they lived happily ever after,” because we don’t like not knowing.  There will be lots we don’t know, but we know and live in Jesus’ promises.  When we come to 16:8, we recognize that Mark has left us with a question/challenge/invitation.  What are we going to do with this good news – “He has been raised, he is not here.”  Even if we dismiss him, we can’t contain him any more than the tomb could.  Jesus is always going before us and promises to meet us, and Jesus continues to make the call – “Follow me.”    

It’s never been about an ending.  At the end of the whole story, God’s voice is heard saying, “Look, I am making all things new.”  It’s always been about expectancy.  The basic life stance of the follower of Christ.  Expectancy.  Expecting to see God in our day-to-day.  Expecting to know God’s promises of being made new, of peace, of joy, of “God with us”, in our day-to-day.  Expecting the day.  Expecting light.  Expecting the Son.

Accepting the invitation each day to go to Galilee and meet him there.  It’s for all disciples.  Those who have failed and are unsure of the way back.  Those who have faithfully followed but on whom fear has fallen and made us silent.  Each of us has failed Jesus. That need not be the end/non-end of our story.  Let us not wallow or withdraw into our failures.  Jesus does not abandon us in our failure.  Let us go back to Galilee.  Let us go back to where we started.  It’s where we started our Lenten journey back at the beginning of March.  We said we’re going back to Galilee.  We finish in the same place.  Let us go to Galilee, for he is going before us and will meet us there.

This is our invitation this Easter Sunday, and it’s a joyful one, my friends.  Let us go back to the place where we first met him.  Let us go back to the place where he first called us, and we dropped everything to follow.  Let us go back to the place where we saw him heal and make whole and bring new life.  Let us go back to the place where Jesus healed us and freed us from the chains of sin and death.  He’s going before us and will meet us there in the everydayness of our lives, and we can all go along together.  Don’t you want to go?

The story doesn’t end, and the question is always before us.  Whether we first answered Jesus’ call years ago or we’re answering it for the first time today, may the good news story of grace and light and life continue to be told by each and every one of us, and may this be true for us all.  He is risen, beloved sisters and brothers.

Amen

What kind of king is this?  One who is steadfastly devoted to the will of his Father.  Even in Gethsemane, when all desert him.  Even in the face of lies being told about him before the Council.  Even in the face of mocking and scorn.  This is Jesus who invites us to follow him.  We may fail him, but his mercy is unfailing.  We don’t come to him or approach his table based on any righteousness or faithfulness of our own, but throwing ourselves on his righteousness and his faithfulness and his mercy.  There are glimmers of light even in the dark of today’s story.    Jesus’ followers have fled.  Peter has denied him.  At the same time, Simon from Cyrene literally takes up the cross and follows Jesus.  At the same time, the women who have followed him from Galilee look on from a distance (and we’ll meet them again).  We continue to look to Jesus and to listen to him as he answers the Council’s question.  “Are you the Messiah, the chosen one, the anointed one, the Son of the Blessed One?”  “I am,” replies Jesus.  His Messiah-ship, his Son-ship, will not be shown in a display of power over the ruling Romans.  When the ruling Roman representative, Pilate, asks Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answers, “You say so.”  This is not just a way to sidestep the question.  It’s as if Jesus is saying, “I am, but not in the way you understand.” 

Jesus is a revolutionary, but not in the way Pilate might think.  Jesus’ kingship/power/authority stands in direct opposition to how the world views power and authority.  It is not based on forcing others to bend to the will of those ruling.  It is not based on threats of violence or acts of violence.  It does not commit injustice against the innocent in the name of keeping the peace.  It is not rooted in envy and jealousy and a desire to cling to power at any cost. 

How sick are we of those ways of power, particularly in our day?

These scenes Mark describes are so full of irony.  The Roman soldiers put a purple cloak on Jesus, not realizing that a royal cloak is perfectly fitting.  The soldiers kneel down in homage to Jesus, not knowing that this is exactly the good and right and fitting and proper response to the King of kings.  Beyond the irony, though, is this truth.  Jesus’ royalty is going to be displayed from a cross.  Jesus’ royalty is going to be demonstrated in self-denying, self-sacrificing love and mercy.  Someone has said, “Jesus exercises power through weakness and authority through love, thereby revealing in revolutionary terms the way the ultimate Power… (of God) works.”

The religious authorities, the chief priests and the scribes thought that the way to power and authority was through self-preservation.  They understand humanity’s need for saving, for help.  Absolutely.   “He saved others,” they say.  But here is where we go wrong – “He saved others, he cannot save himself.  Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.”

Here’s the thing, though.  “So that we may see,” they say.  We want to see.  We’re still remembering that prayer, “Lord, let me see again.”  In the power and authority of the self-giving love of the Son of God, Jesus is saving because he is not coming down from the cross. The crux of the matter.  Darkness coming over the whole land.   Jesus cry of abandonment, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  In some unexplainable way, Jesus, knowing abandonment by God, yet even in those moments still claiming God as his own, devoted to God, refusing to let go of God even when God is being experienced as absent.  “My God, my God.”  Jesus giving a loud cry and breathing his last.  The temple curtain was torn in two, and we remember the day when the heavens were split apart, and the Holy Spirit descended like a dove on the one of whom the voice of God said, “You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.”   These words echoed by a Roman soldier (of all people) looking on at all that had happened and coming out with this wonderful statement of faith – “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

Joseph of Arimathea boldly goes to Pilate and asks for Jesus’ body. “When he (Pilate) learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph.  Then Joseph bought a linen cloth, and taking down the body, wrapped it in the linen cloth, and laid it in the tomb that had been hewn out of the rock.  He then rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.” (15:45-46)  One seemingly final act of reverence and respect and love.  If you have ever stood at an open graveside, is there anything in the world that speaks more of finality?  Here’s the thing about Joseph of Arimathea: he was “a respected member of the council, who was also himself waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God” (15:43). To follow Christ is to live in confident expectation.  I say “seemingly final” because this is not the end.  We remember that Peter’s failure was followed by bitter tears of remorse.  His failure will not be the end of Peter’s story.  We remember that the women who followed Jesus from Galilee are still looking on, as we still look on.  We remember Jesus’ promise of new life on the third day.  New life in Jesus is offered to all. May the centurion’s confession of faith be ours – “Truly, this man was God’s Son!”  Let this be the cry of our hearts, this and every day.  Let us show our trust in him today as we gather at the table of our King.

Amen 

It’s fitting that we haven’t gone for too much celebration in our service today.  We’re moving in our worship service from praise and adulation to quiet, silence, and introspection.  It’s fitting, I think.  Palm Sunday is a story that we come back to year after year, and I want us to pay particular attention to the way Mark tells it.  It’s relatively low-key.  No mention of palms in Mark (or Matthew or Luke for that matter – we get that detail from John). No uproar in the city, no turmoil.  Nothing to attract the attention of Pharisees.  No talk of “The whole world has gone after him.”  No talk of Jesus as Son of David or king here on the part of the crowd.  Silence from Jesus to end the scene as he goes to the Temple. 

I would like us to sit with the silence of Jesus as much as we can this day and this week.  “Who then is this?”  It’s the question we’ve been asking.  Who then are we, as His followers?  We have this picture of Jesus astride a young donkey, and we will borrow that detail from the other Gospel writers.  He’s not speaking.  His feet barely clear the ground.  This is not a Roman ruler coming in triumphant.  Wearing a red cape, riding a white warhorse.

Look, your king is coming!  What kind of king is this?

A king who is not about political or military triumph.  These are not his way.  We last saw Jesus at home in Galilee.  In Nazareth.  The second section of Mark details the journey to Jerusalem.  It begins with a question from Jesus.  “Who do people say that I am?”  Who do people say that he is?  This happens in a place called Caesarea Philippi.  A town named for a Roman emperor and a client king.  This is what power is all about after all.  The town is filled with buildings dedicated to the gods of this world, because we like to build things dedicated to our gods.  A town in what is called today the Golan Heights, close to the Syrian border.  Jesus and his followers are far enough away from where they’ve been operating for a measure of objectivity to come into play, and an objective question is asked.

“Who do people say that I am?”  They answer him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”  This makes sense.  Prophets tell forth.  Prophets tell you what’s going on.  We remember those opening scenes where Jesus was on the move, and his message was “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe the good news.”  God’s plan is in motion, the kingdom of God is within our reach, turn and believe, trust, and rest in him. Jesus is not here to simply ask objective questions.  We’re not here to simply speculate or have a philosophical/hypothetical discussion.  Caesarea Philippi might be far enough away to view things objectively, but if one looks south, one can see the lake.  One can see down the Jordan River valley, which looks toward Jerusalem.  Jerusalem is where this story was always going.  Looking south, we see images of John the Baptist and Jesus in the Jordan River.  We see the heavens being torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove.  We see Jesus walking along beside the lake, stopping by two sets of brothers and saying, “Follow me.”  We see people being made whole.  We see people asking, “Who does he think he is?” and rejecting him.  We see people being forgiven and made new.  We see him in a boat telling the wind and the waves, “Peace.  Be still.”

We want peace.  We want to take this man seriously.  We want to be people who are receiving him well as he asks the question. “Who do you say that I am?”  Peter steps up, “You are the Messiah.”  You are the chosen one.  You are the anointed one. You are the Christ.  Jesus says, “Don’t tell anyone” because it wasn’t quite time yet.  The time is here now, though.  Your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey.

Who then is this?  What kind of king is this?  We hear the shout “Hosanna!”  It means “Save us now!”  What kind of kingdom is this?  It’s not about us.  It’s not about me and my will and my glory and my recognition.  James and John, whom we remember from that day on the shore of Galilee, came forward and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”  Again, Jesus asks a question.  “What is it you want me to do for you?”  They want the best seats in the house.  That’s what it’s all about after all.  “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand, and one at your left, in your glory.”  “You do not know what you are asking,” Jesus tells them.  Calling all the disciples together, he tells them what kind of kingdom the kingdom of God is – “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.   But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

1. Deliverance.  Peace.  Peace with God.  Right relationship with God.  Right relations among God’s creation will come about through suffering and self-giving love and mercy.

“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me,” comes the cry from Bartimaeus.  He’s blind and sitting at the side of the way, as Jesus and his followers make their way up out of Jericho.  It’s a city 800 feet below sea level.  Jesus and his followers and a large crowd are going up to Jerusalem.    “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Bartimaeus cries out.  People tell him to keep quiet.  How unseemly to let our need be known.  Bartimaeus cried ever more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus says, “What do you want me to do for you?” Same question he asked of James and John.  A good answer from Bartimaeus, and may it be our prayer.  “My teacher, let me see again.”  “Go, your faith has made you well,” Jesus tells him.  Your faith has saved you, literally.  Your trust has saved you.  Whatever Bartimaeus does or does not understand at this point, he understands that he has been met by the mercy of God.  Transformed.  Given new life. Given eyes to see. Immediately, Bartimaeus regained his sight and followed Jesus on the way.

Kingdom time is here as they approach Jerusalem.  There will be no more need to keep quiet.  Even now, though, the scene is cloaked in ambiguity.  Mark is keeping it subtle.  This entry is hardly what you would call triumphant, and I think we do well to consider that in our silence today and this week.  There is a kind of lowly grandeur in Jesus here as elements of “kingliness” are mixed with elements of humility.  There is a quiet dignity about Jesus.  He doesn’t try to dampen the praise of the crowd, but neither does he bask in it or encourage it.  There is a quiet authority to Jesus as he makes his way down the road of the King of kings, which goes through suffering and through death.  This is all part of God’s plan.  The things that will happen in Jerusalem are not simply being done to Jesus.  They are all part of God’s plan.  They are all part of Jesus’ way.  Three times between Caesarea Philippi and Jerusalem, Jesus tells his disciples, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed he will rise again.” (9:31)  The plan is in motion.  They are at Bethpage and Bethany, and Jesus sends two disciples into the village (because we’re not meant to do this walk alone).  “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it.  If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?” just say this, “The Lord needs it and will send it back immediately.” (9:2-4)  Was this divine knowledge or had Jesus made arrangements?  We don’t know.  Who does Jesus mean by Lord?  Himself?  God? The colt’s owner?  We don’t know.  We know that we, Jesus, in carrying out a divine plan, calling for a colt that had never been ridden (denoting a sacred purpose, God’s purpose) and invoking the name Lord.

Jesus is not going to be speaking, but his entry into Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt speaks for him.  This was not done.  Even Alexander the Great was persuaded to enter Jerusalem on foot.  Let the King come into town, humble and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

They fashion a saddle out of cloaks for Jesus to sit on.  Many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the field.  This is not something you would do for just anyone.  It is how you would greet a king.  When you reach the top of the Mount of Olives, you get your first sight of Jerusalem.  It’s cause for shouting, for singing, for celebration.  They sing a pilgrim song from a Psalm that recalls the saving power of God in bringing God’s people out of Egypt.  It is Passover time.  It is Kingdom time.

People: Hosanna!

Leader: Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

People: Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!

Leader: Hosanna in the highest heaven!     

From Psalm 118:25-26 – “Save us, we beseech you, O Lord!  O Lord, we beseech you, give us success!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord.” This was a song for travelling people – pilgrim people.  We are a pilgrim, people.  This is our pilgrim song.  This is our King.  To count yourself as a follower of Christ means that this is your story, this is your song.  Hosanna!  Save Lord, we pray!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!  Hosanna in the highest heaven! Those who went with him, those ahead of him and those who followed him were shouting. So we offer up praise this day with singing and maybe even shouting.

Then let us be silent.  The crowd that went with Jesus seems to have dispersed.  They’re not mentioned again here in the scene anyway.  Jesus is still not speaking.  “He entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.” (11:11).

Jesus is not speaking, but he’s inspecting.  He looks around at everything in the Temple.  The place of God’s presence at the time.  Someone has said, “… Jesus is Lord of the Temple, who must inspect its premises to determine whether the purpose intended by God is being fulfilled.”  For the follower of Christ, you are the temple.  As Paul put it, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?”  Self-giving, sacrificing love of God.  The presence of God with us.  May we take the time to stand before this silent Jesus this week, as we wait.  Lent is a time of waiting and preparation to celebrate our crucified and risen King.  This week is a special one in that time of waiting.  May we come before God in silence, asking that we may be people who are fulfilling the purpose which God intends.  Let us sit now in silence and hear God’s word.

Read: Genesis 49:10-11aOpen in Logos Bible Software (if available)

Isaiah 29:18-19Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)

Psalm 118:25-26Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)

Mark 1:14bOpen in Logos Bible Software (if available)

Mark 1:17Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)

Mark 2:5bOpen in Logos Bible Software (if available)

Mark 4:40Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)

Mark 8:29Open in Logos Bible Software (if available)

Of course, we also know that it is often those with whom we are closest, those we know and love best, that we can treat the worst.  They say familiarity breeds contempt, and how often have we spoken to those in our homes and families in ways we would never consider speaking to a stranger on the street?  Rejection is difficult and rejection by those nearest to us may brings up all kinds of emotions from anger to outrage to deep hurt.

The difficult truth in our story today is “not everyone is impressed by Jesus.”  We talked of God’s control and power last week.  We’re reminded this week that God does not control or coerce how we react to him.  In his return to Nazareth, Jesus does not receive the kind of homecoming one might have thought he would receive.  We’re looking at a story of homecoming today, which sounds a warning and a challenge to those who count themselves as members of Jesus’ family, or those feeling drawn to count themselves among those who follow him.   As Jesus put it “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”  Here we are.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we hear God’s word for us today.

Last week, we looked at the story of Jesus calming the storm at the end of Mark 4.  This is the first of four deeds of power that Jesus performs as we read through Mark 5 and come to our story today.  They all point to the life-saving/life-giving power of Jesus.  A storm is stilled, and lives are saved.  A man possessed by demons in the country of the Gerasenes is delivered. A woman who is literally losing her lifeblood is healed.  The dead daughter of a synagogue leader named Jairus is brought to life.  All of these are preludes to a resurrection.  Preludes to new life.  This is what is happening. We might think that this good news would be received warmly by the people of Nazareth, including Jesus’ own family.  Hometown hero returns!  Small town boy makes good!  We love this kind of story.  Local boy puts Nazareth on the map!  We get that.  Would I have heard of Tupelo, MS if not for Elvis?  Would we know Cole Harbour, NS, if not for Sydney Crosby? Local girl makes good!  Local boy makes good!  Wonderful!

Right?

Can anything good come from there?  A hill country town of around 400 people where everyone knows everyone.  Jesus goes to the synagogue on the sabbath day as is his usual (and we’ll come back to the importance of gathering together in a while), and he begins to teach.  Wonderful!  Many who heard him were astonished and said, “Where did this man get all this?  What is this wisdom that has been given him?  What deeds of power are being done by his hands?”  All good questions, and as followers of Christ, we need to keep on asking them, in awe and wonder.

The problem comes in the answer, which comes in the form of a question.  This question can be summed up like this: Who does he think he is?  “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?”  Who does he think he is?  Familiarity is breeding contempt.  Of course, there’s a lot of irony going on in these questions.  When we hear “son of Mary,” we hear echoes of how Mark opens his gospel – “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  They’re asking, “Is not this the carpenter?”  The word here translated carpenter doesn’t strictly have to do with working with wood. The word is tekton, and it was a Greek word for a handyman.  A kind of all-purpose fixer or builder.  If you wanted something fixed or built, you called a tekton.  This man that they are talking about, who is the son of Mary and the son of God, is the all-purpose fixer of all. 

The sad thing in the story is the rejection.  They took offence at him.  They are scandalized by him.  This is not a complete surprise when we look back at an earlier event in Mark.  Jesus is preaching and healing in Galilee.  He’s just appointed the twelve apostles.   The crowds are so big and pressing that they can’t even eat.  When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” (3:21)  Jesus’ family went out to bring him home.  “Come back to Nazareth, son.  Come back to Nazareth, brother, they’re saying you have lost it.”  This gives Jesus a chance to redefine what it means to be part of his family: “Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.  A crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.”  And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”  And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers!  Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (3:31-35)

Don’t reject him.  This message is not just for those who’ve never taken up Jesus’ call to follow him, though it’s for you, too, if you’re in that place this morning.  Get behind him.  Believe in, take hold of, hold onto, the extraordinary ordinariness of Jesus.  Jesus still stands on that beach we looked at a couple of weeks ago, and he’s still saying “Follow me…”  Let us ask ourselves, “Where did this man get all this, and what is this wisdom that has been given to him, and what deeds of power are being done by his hands?”  Let us ask those questions in awe and wonder and pray to God to give us ears to hear wisdom and eyes to see what God is doing all around us. Let us then ask ourselves, “What does this mean for me?  What does this mean in my life?”  Let our first answer be “It means don’t reject him.”

There is a warning here, too, for those of us who consider ourselves to be part of Jesus’ family.  We hear it in Jesus’ words, “Prophets are not without honour, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”  Who are the kin of Jesus?  Who is the body of Christ?  Who is living in Jesus’ house and invited to gather around the family table?

Has familiarity with Christ bred contempt in us?  Have we in the church stopped believing in the extraordinary ordinariness of Christ?  Have we domesticated Jesus in order to use him toward our own ends rather than kingdom ends?  Have we tamed Jesus to the point where he doesn’t challenge us?  There’s a great line in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Susan Pevensie is finding out about Aslan the Lion from Mr. Beaver. 

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion.' 'Ooh,' said Susan. 'I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion'...'Safe?' said Mr Beaver ...' Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”

Rejection of Jesus due to familiarity might not be manifested in what we do or say.  It might be manifested by what we don’t do or what we don’t say.  Has Jesus become so familiar that we ignore him?  Do we give up meeting Jesus in the rhythm of our day?  Talking to him.  Hearing from him.  In the familiar rhythms of our worship together?  In song?  In praying together?  In gathering around his table together?  In knowing a new life together and living life newly together?

Do we say, in some way,  ”Who does he think he is?”   There is a double sadness about this story, you see.  The initial sadness is in Jesus being rejected by those who knew him best.  This is a sad, sad state of affairs when Jesus is rejected by those who know him best.  There is a second sadness, though.  “And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.  And he was amazed at their unbelief.” (6:5-6)  Let the thing that amazes Jesus about us be our faith, not our rejection of him.  The same word for amazed is used by Luke when a Roman centurion’s servant is dying.  The centurion sends friends to Jesus with this message -  “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore, I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed.  For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.” (Luke 7:6a-8)  Jesus is amazed and tells the crowd, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”  He hadn’t found such faith at home.   This is the only time this word amazed is used about Jesus in Mark, and what a sad thing for Jesus to be amazed by.  He could do no deed of power there, and sure, nothing is impossible with God.  But it seems that our reaction to Jesus makes a difference in what God will do in and through a community of people who claim to belong to him, who claim him as one of their own. How many people who needed healing in Nazareth were not healed?  How many who longed to hear good news in Nazareth did not hear it?  A man named Lamar Williamson Jr, once professor emeritus of Biblical Studies at Union Theological Seminary and the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, VA, had this to say:

“The spiritual climate of a congregation, its sense of expectancy, its openness to the power of God at work through Jesus Christ, will in fact have a great deal to do with how much God’s power can accomplish in that particular community.  Our unbelief does not render God impotent, but when it is dominant in a congregation, its dampening effect on the mighty acts of God in that time and place is evident and sad.”

Be encouraged to know that God is doing mighty acts of power in the hearts of the people who make up his church here at 80 Blythwood Rd.  May it be the same for every gathering of Jesus’ family.  We’ve not written the book on it, and we fail, and we will continue to pray that may be open to God moving in our hearts in such a way that we are willfully joyfully following and keeping our eyes on Jesus rather than rejecting or neglecting him.   I don’t want to be living in a sad reality here, and I know you don’t either.  What is all of this going to mean in our lives and in the life of the church?  What kind of people might God make us?  The story doesn’t end here.  I said that this was a story of warning, of challenge.  It’s also a story of comfort.  The story doesn’t end here.  It goes on with us.

Here’s the comforting thing.  Remember Jesus’ promise to his disciples that he would make them something else.  Jesus speaks here of prophets being without honour among their own kin and in their own house.  We also know that for Jesus’ family, rejection is not the final word.  James will go on to become the anchor of the church in Jerusalem.  Listen to this description of Jesus’ followers from Acts 1-  “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.”  Jesus’ other brothers became big-time in the early church, too.  Here’s Paul in 1 Cor 9:5 – “Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?”  Rejection, neglect, and lack of understanding need not have the last word, sisters and brothers in Christ.

Finally, we have these words at the beginning of our story that we might almost miss (if you will allow me to end with the beginning).  He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.  His disciples were with him; their follow is never in question.  God grant that we might be like them.  The people to whom Jesus entrusted his work.  The people who long to do the will of God and who do the will of God.  May God make us such people.  Jesus calls them family.  Jesus calls us family.  See what love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

Amen  

God's Power to pilot me,

God's Might to uphold me,

God's Wisdom to guide me,

God's Eye to look before me,

God's Ear to hear me,

God's  Word to speak for me,

God's Hand to guard me,

God's Way to lie before me,

God's Shield to shelter me,

This, of course, means that we are not.  Let us not be getting this wrong as we are keeping our eyes on Jesus.  I remember reading a story online about a church scandal.  In the comment section, someone had written, “I am not surprised… religion is after all about power and control.”  This opinion did come out of thin air, of course.  Where Christian leaders think leadership is about control/domination/coercion/bending others to their will (and isn’t that what so much of leadership is about these days?), we go very wrong.  When followers of Christ think that we need to seek political/economic/military power (and fight holy wars) for the sake of the Kingdom of God, we go very wrong.  In our lives, we will be met with (and we may currently be in) situations which are beyond our ability to control.  The invitation remains before each and every one of us, each and every day – turn and trust.  Repent and believe.  Turn and trust the one whose command is even over the wind and the waves.  Turn toward and trust the one on whom we are keeping our eyes, though the Good News of Mark, as we travel together through these weeks of Lent.    

We’re looking at a story about Jesus performing a deed of power and control, and this one is of particular significance.  We’re asking the questions through these weeks, “What kind of kingdom is this that is made up of Christ’s followers?  What kind of king is this whom we follow?”  “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” is the question of the disciples.  Let this be the question of our lives, just like the apostle Paul – “Who are you, Lord?”  I want to know you more.  This is primarily a story about Jesus.  We’ll look at what this story means for us in a little while, but we begin where we always must begin – with what it tells us about Jesus. Son of Man.  Son of God.  We begin with what it tells us about God.

To whom we are called to ascribe all power and all control, and all authority.  Who then is this…

Jesus?  Who has been in the boat for a while?  Jesus was teaching all day from the boat.  He was teaching about the kingdom of God.  He was telling people that news of the kingdom of God would be received in different ways.  He was telling people that the kingdom of God grows like seeds that a farmer scatters - mysteriously and in ways that are unknown to us.  He was telling them it grows inexorably like a mustard seed.  There is no stopping the kingdom of God.  This is demonstrated as our story continues.  Jesus tells his followers, “Let us go across to the other side.”  The other side of the Sea of Galilee is gentile territory.  “We’re going to break on through to the other side,” says Jesus.  It’s kingdom time.  It’s good news time. 

All is found in the man who falls asleep in the boat.  I don’t know that there is any other Gospel story (good news story) in our Bible that so fully describes Jesus as both fully human and fully God.  Jesus is exhausted.  He’s been speaking all day from this boat. He is done in.  He is sleeping even in the midst of a violent storm.  At the same time, we see Jesus having power over the very wind and waves that are threatening life.

You know I have a healthy respect for large bodies of water.  Oceans, most definitely.  Lakes even.  The black water lakes of cottage country.  Great respect.  When we are invited to a cottage, I like to take the opportunity to go out in a kayak (life jacket, of course).  I invariably capsize it.  I remember once being out quite far and turning it over.  I was holding onto the kayak, wondering how I was going to get it and myself back to the dock.  How glad was I to see our friend’s daughter dive in, swim out to where I was and help tow the kayak back in.  I have no stories about being in a boat in a storm because I absolutely would be nowhere near the water in a storm and have great respect for all who brave such conditions.

In my trepidation, I feel a kinship with the Israelites.  The sea in the Bible very often symbolizes chaos or forces that work against God’s purposes.  The earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the waters.  Chaos.  Formlessness.  Confusion. Unreality.  Emptiness.  In the books of Daniel and Revelation, we read of monsters emerging from the sea speaking arrogance and blasphemy.  These concepts are not difficult for us who live in a world so full of the madness of war and the arrogance of greed and the blasphemy of oppression.  The darkness does not have the last word.  Then God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.”  The Ancient One sits on his throne, and one like a human being comes to the Ancient One and is given glory and dominion and kingship (Daniel 7).  In Revelation 21, John describes a vision of the renewal of all things, and he writes, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”  Darkness.  Confusion.  Chaos.  Arrogance. Blasphemy.  No more.

Sometimes a storm is not just a storm.  Mark doesn’t say this pointedly, but Mark knew the power of symbolism.  There is something being depicted here of the struggle against forces that would oppose God and God’s will for humanity and all of creation.  Jesus is awakened by his fearful disciples, and he speaks.  He doesn’t pray that the storm would stop, note.  This deed of power is revealing something about who this man is.  Prophets had healed people before.  Prophets had even raised the dead before.  This power is something new.  Jesus speaks, and he uses the same kind of language with which he addressed a demon earlier in the story (Mark 1:25): “Peace!” Be silent.  “Be still!” This is a much more polite way than this could be translated, literally “Muzzle yourself.”  “Shut up.”  “Ferme ta gueule,” as we were taught never to say in French.  Shut your trap.

This is maybe best because we know how these forces trap us.  I have usually imagined Jesus standing with one foot on the gunwale, holding his arms up as he speaks these words.  Looking at this picture by Rembrandt (the only seascape Rembrandt ever painted), I like to think Jesus simply spoke from where he was. Maybe even still lying down or propped up on one elbow.  Turning his head to the waves and saying, “Peace.  Muzzle yourself.”  Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.

God himself is with us, dear sisters and brothers.  Whom shall we fear?  God himself is with us.  Of what shall we be afraid?  This man in the boat with us is the Son of God.  To put it more plainly, this man is God.

We turn now to ourselves.  We’re asking “Who then is this?” and we’re asking “What does it mean to be his follower?”  To be a disciple of Christ, to be a student of Christ, means those words that are sometimes dreaded in a learning situation – there will be a test.  Following Jesus is not simply auditing a course.  It’s not simply going to class (and I must say I always encourage those auditing courses to write the papers if they have time and to sit the tests – it’ll be good if you have the time).  The apostles have spent a day listening to truths about the kingdom of God, how it grows mysteriously and in ways unknown to us, how its growth is inexorable and inevitable.  Someone has described their situation after listening to a day of Jesus’ teaching like this, “One may hope that when the next threat to their security arises, they will remember and maintain courage, perhaps asking Jesus, 'Is this what you were talking about?” Instead, they panic, charge Jesus with not caring, and react with astonishment when he rescues them. If we view the last episode of chapter 4 as the test at the end of the day’s teaching, the disciples do not demonstrate they have mastered the material.”

Neither have we, of course.  We wonder where Jesus is.  We wonder if God even cares.  Lent is a good time for self-examination.  Lent is a good time to hear Jesus asking us questions like, “Why are you afraid?”  “Have you still no faith?”

We can find ourselves in the middle of a raging storm.  We may find storm clouds on the horizon.  The disciples have been asked to go to the other side.  The other side can be difficult.  The other side can be full of unknowns.  We don’t know what awaits us on the other side.  Someone has said that the other side of health is illness.  Getting a report from the doctor that you didn’t expect.  The other side of a loving, committed marriage is a broken relationship, acrimony, guilt and shame.  The other side of a dream job in one’s field is layoff or dismissal, and wondering what this means to one’s identity.  A trip to the other side in the middle of a storm might make us cry out, “Where are you, God?” or “Don’t you even care?”

In the howling gale, we hear Jesus speak words of peace.  We find that in the middle of the test and trial, we are coming to know something more of God.  We find that in the middle of being beyond our power and being taken outside of the realm of things that we think we can control, we are being formed into God’s people.  What a blessing it is to be able to share together about how we are learning to trust God.  What a blessing it is to be able to keep on reminding one another to look to Jesus, who demonstrates trust in his loving Father to death and beyond death.  What have we to fear? Absolutely nothing. And we pray, “Lord, strengthen our faith, help us to know our dependence on you.”  Jesus is in the boat.  Jesus has brought us this far, and we have good reason to believe he will keep bringing us.

We remember too that Jesus is bringing us together.  It is not for nothing that the image of a ship at sea has been used for centuries to depict the church.  Not a ship of state or a ship of fools, but the ship of Christ Jesus.  We have it on one of our paraments (the one we use for Ordinary Time).  I love it when church construction reflects theology.  The word “nave” that is used to describe the central part of a church building is from the Latin word navis, which means “ship.”  Often, roof beams are left exposed, not due to lack of funds to finish the ceiling, but because if you flipped them upside down, they look like the bottom of a ship.

“Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”  The living Word, who was in the beginning with God, who was God.  The Word through whom all things came into being.  The Word who became flesh and lived among us, who lives among us in the Holy Spirit of God.  May we be coming evermore to trust him, and may this be true for all of us. Amen

This is the good news on which we focus today as we read this story from the 2^nd chapter of Mark’s Gospel.  Forgiveness is God’s business.  Good news!  Or is it?  Scribes in our story take offence at Jesus’ words, “You are forgiven.”  What can be so offensive about the concept of forgiveness?  On one hand, we might think that we aren’t in need of any kind of divine mercy.  I’m basically a good person.  I’m good to my family and friends and even strangers.  I rinse out my recycling, etc., etc. To this, I would answer two things.  i) Look at the state of humanity now (or anytime) and tell me that we are not in need of help when it comes to being forgiven and extending forgiveness.  ii) Let us take a good look at the state of our hearts.  The things that we have done that we ought not to have done.  The things we have left undone that we ought to have done (as the old Anglican prayer of confession goes). On the other hand, we have “Only God can forgive sins.”  Humanity has a tendency to put itself in the place of God, deciding who is worthy of forgiveness and who is not.

We look at this story, and we realize we can put up barriers between ourselves and God’s forgiveness – whether it comes to accepting it or offering it.  Because guilt and shame can be paralyzing.  Because we might hold differing positions on who has the authority to forgive wrongdoing.  Is it solely the person against whom the offence was committed?  Is there any wrongdoing that is beyond forgiveness?  Is there any kind of wrong that we can do from which we can never come back/never be made whole once again?

Because we’re also talking about wholeness today.  Healing.  Being made well.  Being made able to walk.  We find in our story today that forgiveness and wholeness are inextricably linked.  These four men bring their friend to Jesus for healing, and they find more than healing.  Forgiveness and wholeness.  They go together.  Do sin and illness go together?  Not in a causal sense, no.  Not in the sense that you can look at suffering and draw a causal line to that suffering from sin.  Christians have been known to say things like “You’re not being healed because of a lack of faith.”  That is wrong.  Christians have been known to say, “This suffering/this calamity must be the result of some sin on your part.”  That is wrong.  This is not to say that doing wrong doesn’t bring consequences that might be damaging to one’s health or the health of one’s relationships – I don’t have to paint a picture here.

Healing happens in this story, but it’s about more than a healing.  Faith is happening in this story, but it’s about more than faith.  This is a story that some of us have heard from the time we were children.  We liked it when we were children, thinking of people climbing up on roofs and digging holes through mud and thatch and so on.  Jesus has been on a preaching and healing tour.  The four disciples that we heard about last week are still with him.  Simon and Andrew.  James and John.  It’s come to the point where he can’t even go about openly in towns, so great is his popularity.  That won’t last, of course, and in our story, we hear the first stirrings of opposition to Jesus.  The scandal of Jesus.  The scandal of the cross.  The scandal of forgiveness.   What is the big deal, though?  The big deal, the good news here, is what is at the heart of the story.  At the heart of the story is forgiveness.  God is on the loose in the world.  Forgiveness is on the loose.  Wholeness is on the loose.  Not through any prescribed set of actions or words.  Not through paying one’s debt to society or evening up a score.  Not even through dependence on the forgiveness of others, and how difficult it is for humanity to forgive.   

We need forgiveness.  Unless we don’t.  I remember a character on a tv show talking to a stranger about his need for forgiveness.  “Do you think we can ever really be forgiven?” he asked.  He had left his wife and children to pursue a relationship with his secretary.  The guilt and shame had left him feeling like he was “getting kicked in the head every day.”  The stranger tells him he doesn’t believe in forgiveness.  It’s just synapses in the brain that do not alter the fact that what has happened has happened.  He concludes that the only solution is to stay away from people.  “You can’t believe that,” he’s told. We can’t believe that.  The kingdom of God is not a solo project.  Jesus knew that we would mess things up even in the church, to the point where he left his followers instructions on how to go about dealing with things when we hurt each other.   Paul knew that we would mess things up.  He writes to the Ephesian church – “and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”  (Eph 4:32)  

We’re turning to Jesus.  We’re keeping our eyes on Jesus.  Into our situation and all our questions steps Jesus.  Well, actually, Jesus is sitting because he’s teaching in a house.  He’s in Capernaum, which is his home base at this point.  It might be that this is Peter’s house.  It might even be Jesus’ house, we’re not told, and we’re not surprised as Mark is not a details guy.  Whatever the case, Jesus has an interest in this house.  He has a stake in this house, even if it’s only as a place in which he can stay and/or teach.

In the middle of the teaching, the first house committee in the New Testament goes to work.  You have to admire the faith of these men who wish to bring their friend to Jesus.  We have to consider the role that our faith might play in someone else being forgiven and made whole.  Their friend needs help.  They believe that Jesus is the one to provide it.  They will go to any length or height.  These houses had flat thatched roofs.  Under the thatch would be a layer of soil, then some clay tiles laid over the roof beams.  In the middle of his talk, pieces of dirt and clay start falling from above.  Daylight appears.  We heard about the heavens being torn apart two weeks ago. A new situation.  Here we have much the same thing.  The roof is torn apart.  Tear the roof off the sucker.  We want the forgiveness.  Let the sunshine in. The man is lowered down to where Jesus is.  Jesus does not speak words of condemnation.  He does not say “Look what you just did to the roof?!”  or “I’m in the middle of my sermon here!” Instead, Jesus, seeing their faith, says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”  On the surface or at first glance, the crowd might have thought Jesus was talking about the destruction of the roof.  There is something much deeper going on here, and the crowd is quick to realize.  “Son, your sins are forgiven.”  The “Son” thing here is not a term of belittlement or condescension; it’s a term of endearment.  Let us hear those words directed to ourselves.  “Daughter, your sins are forgiven.  Dear daughter, your sins are forgiven.”  “Dear son, your sins are forgiven.”

How wonderful.

Or maybe it’s not so wonderful.  Maybe some are questioning in their hearts.  In our scene, scribes are thinking, “Only God can do that!”  In our scene, this man Jesus, who is God, is doing that, and at some time, Jesus will bear the weight of humanity’s guilt and shame on the cross and die forgiving.  Of course, that won’t be the end of his story, as we will see.

Forgiveness is hard.  Forgiveness is costly.  Forgiveness may be offensive.  It may offend our pride; our desire for revenge; our desire for retribution; our desire for reparation; our desire for abject apology; our sense of fairness, even as we might want to set our own parameters around when forgiveness should be extended.  There was a time in my life that I thought it was a perfectly good Christian response to withhold forgiveness from someone who had committed a wrong against myself or (even worse) against people that I loved.  I thought that it was a good and Christian response to withhold forgiveness and treat them with complete and utter indifference (of course, I wasn’t indifferent at all, far from it) until such times as they apologized.  Reading with new eyes (or new eyes of the heart), the story of the Waiting Father changed this for me one day.  Reading about the father, whose son had taken his inheritance, declaring in effect that he wished his father were dead, and squandering the money in a far-off country.  Reading of how the son had a whole speech prepared about how sorry he was.  Reading of how the son didn’t even get to say his speech as the father saw him coming from afar, was filled with compassion, and ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.  “Son, your sins are forgiven.”  Realizing that day that I was the one who had been in a far country, living apart from my Father’s mercy; living apart from my Father’s forgiveness, which is always on offer in the form of His outstretched merciful hand.  Jesus is teaching here in the house of forgiveness, and the roof is torn off as forgiveness reigns in the kingdom of God.

The Son of Man is here.  The Son of Man has the authority to forgive sin.  Sometimes a son of man is not just a son of man.  “Son of Man” is one of Jesus’ favourite self-designations.  He calls himself “the son of man.”  The expression meant “human being” or “guy” more colloquially.  The man is here.  The guy is here.  Jesus as fully human.  The guy is here.  God is here.  Jesus as fully God.  The Son of Man is a figure described in Daniel 7: 13-14

  13 As I watched in the night visions,

I saw one like a human being[a]    coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One[b]    and was presented before him. 14 To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.

This is the one who is here.  This is the one who will come to bring his kingdom in fullness – to renew and restore all things.  As someone has said, Jesus’ “… use of this phrase means something like, ‘God is going to send someone who will transform the world and put an end to oppression, and I am that someone.’”

To take up the Son of Man’s invitation to follow him is to take part in his forgiving, whole-making work.  Where do we need to be active participants in the forgiveness of God in our lives, in our relationships, in our church?  Where is God calling us to accept mercy and extend mercy?  What will forgiveness and reconciliation mean in the nations of our world that are at war? Does this seem like an impossibility? Do we think the days of God working miraculous signs and wonders are over?  We remember stories like that of the Rev. Dale Lang, who found forgiveness for the young man who killed his son in Taber, Alberta.  Rev. Lang made the connection between forgiveness and healing or wholeness like this. “The problem will be if you can’t reach that place of forgiveness, then you’re going to get stuck in that place of anger and bitterness,” said Lang.

“Forgiveness is not saying it’s okay or acceptable; it’s saying that I’m choosing to let go of this for my own health and to move on in life.”

Where forgiveness comes, healing and wholeness come.  We are freed from the paralyzing weight of guilt and shame; freed from the hatred or desire for revenge that eats us up from the inside.  The power of hearing that you are loved and forgiven.  The power of forgiving.

For the follower of Christ, we’re forgiven to be forgiving.  When we forgive, the kingdom of God is made known.  I’m going to close with some thoughts from NT Wright on what this means in our lives and in the communities in which we live: “We have to find ways of bringing healing and forgiveness to our communities. It can be done… but it is enormously costly. People will oppose it. But the new life that comes, as a result, is enough vindication, enough proof that the living God is at work.

Forgiveness can also, of course, change individuals. It can, as in this case, go down to the hidden roots of the personality, gently healing old, long-buried hurts. Often, people think healing and forgiveness are impossible. They find God distant or uncaring. But true faith won’t be satisfied with that. This story is a picture of prayer. Don’t stay on the edge of the crowd. Dig through God’s roof and find yourself in his presence. You will get more than you bargained for… Once you’ve met the living, forgiving God in Jesus, you’ll find yourself on your feet, going out into the world in the power of God’s love.”

May each and every follower of Christ find themselves this way. Keenly aware daily of the truth that we live in the forgiveness and grace of Jesus, and that we are forgiven to be forgiving.  May this be true for all of us. Amen

We heard the good news announced by Jesus last week, and it makes up the beginning of the text we are looking at this week.  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near…”  The kingdom of God is at hand.  “Repent, and believe the good news.”  Turn and trust.  Take up Jesus’ call to follow him.  Answer Jesus' call to follow and keep on answering. Discipleship is a trip.  You know I’m big on imagery, and one of my personally favourite names for people who are following Jesus is “followers of Jesus.”  This exact phrase is not from the Bible, but we remember in Acts 9 that we read about Saul going to Damascus to find anyone who belonged to the Way.  I belong to the Way.  This is good.  In our story today, we hear Jesus calling out, “Follow me.”  Simon and Andrew, James and John begin their follow.  

I belong to the Way.  I belong to Jesus.  I am a follower of Jesus.  We said last week that we would be looking at questions like “What kind of kingdom is Jesus announcing?”  What is the kingdom of God like?  We find right from the beginning that the kingdom of God is populated by followers of Jesus.

Jesus is on the move in Galilee.  Italian film director Pier Paulo Pasolini made a movie in 1964. It’s actually based on Matthew’s Gospel and is appropriately called “The Gospel According to St. Matthew.”  I want to show it to you the scene of Jesus first calling people.  It shows the speed at which things are happening (including how quickly Jesus is walking), which is very much a feature of Mark’s gospel.  There is an urgency and an immediacy about matters.  Here’s the scene.

As Jesus meets the farmers, he tells them the good news.  “The time is fulfilled.  The kingdom of heaven has come near.  Repent and believe in the good news.”  Jesus approaches the fishermen and issues the invitation to them, saying nothing more than “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”  “Follow me” might be better translated as “Come behind me.”  Immediately, they left their nets and followed him.    As he went a little farther, he saw James, son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets.  Immediately, he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

May we capture or recapture the strangeness of this scene?  The peculiarity or uniqueness of it.   For myself, Pasolini’s scene helps here.  The urgency of the message.  The figure of Jesus, who is at the same time different, authoritative, and strangely compelling.  Why do we look at this story that happened over 2,000 years ago, which speaks of some fundamental truths for our everyday lives?  How is this man still authoritative and compelling? 

Let’s talk about it.  Here are some good conversation starters.  What is your purpose?  What do you live for?  What do you believe in?  What is the thing that shapes, directs, and gives meaning to your life?  We need to be having these conversations, particularly with our young people.  The alternative is to come to the conclusion that nothing matters.  There are no rules anymore.  Shamelessness is a competitive advantage.  This sort of nihilism is evident in so much digital media – nothing really matters.  From looksmaxxing to AI slop to brain-rot inducing content which worships at the altar of the attention economy.    What is the purpose of my life?

The purpose of my life is this man who issues the invitation “Follow me.”  The purpose of my life is the good news that is proclaimed and embodied in this man who has come to Galilee and is proclaiming, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news.”  Jesus tells of what is happening.  The time is fulfilled.  God has broken into human history in this person who is walking along so quickly.  Jesus is not attempting to persuade or cajole or sell a message.  Jesus is declaring and compelling.  God’s purposes are being worked out.  History is not simply an endless cycle of repeating mistakes, or an inevitable ascent or descent on humanity’s part (depending on your point of view).  The kingdom of God has come near.  The kingdom of God is at hand.  The kingdom of God is within our reach.  The reign of God has come near in the person of Jesus and in Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, ascension and promised return.  We’re getting ahead of ourselves, I know, but we read this scene in a larger context.  The kingdom/reign of God is here in this man, and it has yet to come in its fullness.  We ask, “Well, is the kingdom of God here or is it coming?” and the reply is “Yes!”   Here’s how one writer describes it. “ …history is not circular but linear, with a beginning, middle, and end. God started it, and he will end it because he is the sovereign Lord of the universe. And the end, … is in fact a new beginning, the restoration of creation as it was intended to be. Jesus’ ­ announcement that “the kingdom of God is close at hand” means the endgame has begun.”

Jesus speaks and acts with authority.  This is a tough one for us these days.  We may look at claims to authority with suspicion.  We have been and continue to be let down by people in authority.  When I was growing up, we would have CFRB on in the kitchen when I was eating breakfast.  One of their taglines was “Ontario’s authoritative news voice.  Who would dare to make such a claim now?  Jesus speaks with authority as he is the author.  The author and finisher of our faith.  The one in whom all of God’s promises are “Yes.”  What Jesus says, he brings about. The kingdom of God is at hand.  The heavens have been torn, and God is on the loose in the world.  His healings show how we may be restored in him.  He forgives (which we’ll look at next week) and shows that the power of sin is being broken – the power of messing up, the power of doing wrong that separates us from God and from one another.  Jesus’ command over the wind and waves points to his ability to restore all of fallen creation.  All these are postcards from the kingdom, telling people that the power of the kingdom of God or the reign of God is really present and its fullness is coming.

This is what is happening.  Jesus is telling it.  It’s good news time.  It’s decision time.  It’s kingdom time. “Repent and believe in the good news.”  Turn with reckless abandon.  Trust.  Trust in him.  Rest in him.  Jesus is telling what’s going on and the good and fitting and proper response to what is going on, all in 17 words!  “The time has come.  The kingdom of God has come near.  Repent and believe the good news.”

Jesus calls us to follow.  The kingdom of God is not a solo project.  As Jesus walks along the lake, he sees two sets of brothers.  Simon and Andrew.  James and John. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”  We don’t know what kind of day it was.  We don’t know how the four felt about fishing, apart from the fact that James and John were in a family business (“Zeb and Sons”) big enough to have employees.  We do know this.  For Andrew and Peter and James and John, being in the presence of Jesus meant a change.  We heard the line last week about the heavens being torn and a new situation coming about in the person of Jesus.  We were reminded of the line from Isaiah who cried out, “Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”  A cry of “We can’t go on like this.”  A cry of “I can’t go on like this.”  A needful cry.  I need this Jesus, and my need is all I need to possess for Jesus to say, “Welcome to the kingdom, get behind me.”  Come after me.  Are you ready boots?  Start walking.  We’ll walk together.

Jesus will make us something else.  Jesus will pull us up out of the water.  He’s the fisherman par excellence.  If you follow him, he’s the one who pulled you up out of the water.  “I am going to turn you into something else,” says Jesus.  Jesus doesn’t look only at who we are, you see, he looks at who we will become – in the same way a sculptor looks at a block of marble (and we can be pretty tough to chip away at) and sees not a block of marble but the beautiful sculpture that will result.  In the same way that someone who carves wood sees not simply a block of wood, but the beautiful carving that is hidden in that ordinary block of wood.  Jesus looks at Peter and sees not simply a man who fishes.  Jesus sees a man who is going to preach a sermon one day, and people are going to be cut to the heart, and say, “What should we do?”  Peter will tell them to repent (turn) and be baptized and receive the Holy Spirit of God, and those who welcome his message will be baptized, and that day, about three thousand persons will be added to the kingdom.  Jesus looks at Peter and sees the man who will preach the first sermon to a group of Gentiles in the home of an Italian centurion named Cornelius – because everyone is welcome in this kingdom. 

All it takes from us is dropping our nets and following.  If you’ve been following Jesus for any length of time, who has God made you, who is God making you, who will God make you?  I had no idea at 20 years of age who God would make me at 30, 40, 50. I wouldn’t have believed it.   “I will make you fishers of people,” says Jesus, living out and telling of the good news of Jesus and the kingdom of God and inviting people into new life.  Inviting people to hear the call.  Follow me.  Come up out of the water and learn what it means to walk on dry land.  Come up out of the water and find out what it means to live.  The following is the thing.  The disciples here are our examples, and they continue to be throughout the Gospel of Mark.  Their following is never in doubt.  Lord, make us such people.  They will be slow to understand, quick to criticize, and quick to pride.  Their words will not match their following.  We are heartened as we are slow to understand, quick to criticize and quick to pride.  Our words at times do not match our following.  But their following is never in doubt.  It’s never in question.  Just.  Keep. On. Following.  

I want to speak to those who wouldn’t consider themselves as having made a decision to follow Jesus like these four men.  Here’s the good news – the kingdom of God is within reach.  Follow him.  What are you living for?  Maybe it’s stale.  Maybe it’s meaningless.  Maybe lines like “Things fall apart/The centre cannot hold” have taken on new meaning.  This talk of the insufficiency of the status quo might be resonating.  This talk of “I/we can’t go on like this” may be resonating.  Get behind this man who is striding alongside the lake.  Don’t delay.  You may think, “I need more faith first.”  Don’t delay.  Your following will inform your faith, because look at the one that we follow!  God will work that out in the power of the Holy Spirit in us.  You may think, “I don’t have all the answers to my questions.”  Neither do I, and I have been following Christ for over 40 years.  We don’t even know where this Gospel of Mark ends, remember.  We don’t know everything, but we know the one who does.  Don’t think that you need to do a cost/benefit analysis or make a pro/con list.  Human reason alone would never get us behind, Jesus.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer called this story “a stumbling block to natural reason.”  How could they just up and go?  How could they not?  They didn’t know what following Christ would involve, what it would cost.  In their follow, they found life, even in death.  You wouldn’t make this stuff up, you really wouldn’t.  Bonhoeffer went on, “It gives no intelligible program for a way of life, no goal or ideal to strive after. It is not a cause which human calculation might deem worthy of our devotion.”  The story simply describes a call and a response.  Let your response be today, “God, I’m lost, and I need You. I want to follow this man, and I want to start now.  Forgive me and make me who you would have me be.”

You may be a follower of Christ who has been spending too much time in your boat, too much time with your nets.  What are you living for?  Where does your loyalty lie?  Has your discipleship slipped  into a preoccupation with things like nets and boats and hired men and women?  Take up the call to follow in a renewed way.

For those whose follow is strong and sure, keep walking.  Keep on inviting others into the walk by what we do and what we say, as God continues to shape us into the people he would have us be.  From wherever we approach the story this morning, may each and every one of us put ourselves into the scene I’m going to end with, coming behind the man who we’ve gone back to Galilee to meet.  May this be true for each and every one of us. Amen

Yet this morning, we are being asked to consider news.  Throughout these weeks of Lent from now to Easter Sunday, we are going to be considering news.  The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  This is how Mark begins his Gospel.  Which is the word that’s been translated “good news” here, by the way?  Evangelion in Greek.  Where we get our word evangelize – tell the story of Jesus.  Show the story of Jesus.  Live the story of Jesus.  A “Gospel” wasn’t a literary form at the time Mark wrote the word.  It hadn’t yet come into common usage to describe the first four books of our Bible with a capital G.

Mark is announcing the beginning of good news.  The good news that is still going.  The good news that is being played out in our lives as we follow Christ.  This is what we’re going to be looking at over the next 7 weeks.  “What Is This?” is broken down into two questions by Mark.  These are the questions that we’re going to be looking at over the coming weeks.  The first question: What kind of Messiah (chosen one, anointed one) is Jesus Christ?  The second question: What does it mean to follow such a Messiah?

Mark careens through the sixteen chapters of his good news almost breathlessly.  Someone has compared it to the way a child would tell a story.  “Then we went to the beach.  And I built a sandcastle.  And I saw a crab.  And I tried to catch it.  Then a big wave came and washed my sandcastle away.  Then we had ice cream.”  “And” is a big word for Mark.  As is the word usually translated “immediately”.  It occurs over 30 times in the story.  There is a strong presentation of Christ as the divine Son of God.  There is also a strong presentation of Christ’s humanity.  There are details that are not found in any other Gospel.  Jesus had sisters!  There are tender moments that Mark includes, such as Jesus taking a young child in his arms as he explains that the Kingdom of God belongs to the least of these.  There is the time that Jesus castigates his disciples for keeping children away from him.  At the end of that scene, Mark adds that Jesus takes them in his arms and blesses them.

He is announcing good news.  The good news of the Kingdom of God.

As it is written in the Prophet Isaiah.  This is how Mark begins.  The good news begins as it is heard in the silence.  The good news begins as it is heard in the wilderness.  We need to be silent in order to hear it.  These weeks of Lent invite us to be silent in the face of this good news.  When we are silent, we learn that the good news of which we speak, the good news in which we are invited to take part, the good news upon which we are invited to base our lives, is based on very old news.  It’s based on a very old proclamation.

Hear ye!  Hear ye!  This is what the old town criers used to shout.  Extra!  Extra!  Read all about it!  This was the cry in later years.  We don’t have people making such cries now, and maybe that’s part of the problem.  We need something to get our attention.

Listen to the voice of the prophet.

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying in the wilderness…”

“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

It’s a mixture of three texts.  One taken from Exodus – the first of God’s great delivering acts in the Old Testament.  One from Malachi – promising God’s presence in the Temple and a renewal of God’s people.  One taken from Isaiah, promising that a way would be made for the people of Israel to return from exile.

Mark gets right to the action.  No explanation of who John the Baptizer is.  Only that he is proclaiming a message of good news based on old proclamations of good news.  John comes striding out of the desert dressed like an OT prophet, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  There’s no explanation here as to how this works.  There is no theology of Baptism here for Mark – only that the three are somehow intertwined.  There is no explanation about who the proclaimer is or who’s making the way.  We are simply given the news that way is being made.

We are asked to make a decision.

To prepare a way ourselves by repenting – by changing one’s thinking – by turning toward God.  The cry once sounded like this:

“Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”

1. Make the choice to turn toward God.  Whether it’s the first time or the 501st time.  Repent in dust and ashes, confessing our need for God.  Confessing our need for forgiveness.  This is one of the great things about the traditional church calendar – periods like Advent and Lent.  Periods of time in which we become intentional (or more intentional) about our turning toward God.  You may choose Lent as a time to fast from something.  We’re encouraging everyone to follow a series of Lenten readings, which you can receive via email.  There are also hard copies of the readings at the back of the sanctuary.  Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation, is how Paul put the news to the people of Corinth.  Now is the time to repent, to confess our wrongdoing – the things we have done that we ought not to have done, and the things that we ought to have done and have left undone.  To recognize our need for the one for whom we are not fit to even untie his sandals.

The one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit.  Another echo of the prophet who proclaimed, speaking for the Lord, “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

I will give you life.  This was the promise.

And here comes the bearer of the promise.  Mark gets right to it as usual.  Jesus appears in the same wilderness.  The place of God’s protection.  The place of testing.  The place of the people’s rebellion.  The place of repentance.  The place of God’s grace and provision.  “In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.”  Mark doesn’t include things like the conversation between the two of them.  John protesting that he is the one who should be baptized by Jesus.  Mark simply describes the act.

Which leads inevitably to the question “Why was Jesus baptized?”  Surely he had no need for repentance and forgiveness!  That’s right, he didn’t.  In his baptism, Jesus is identifying himself with humanity in every way.  He is identifying himself with you and me.  Someone has described it like this – “He (Jesus) associates himself with sinners and ranges himself in the ranks of the guilty, not to find salvation for himself, not on account of his own guilt… but because he is at one with the Church and the bearer of divine mercy.”

He is at one with those who follow him.  He calls us brothers and sisters.  Our invitation, friends, is to take up this call to follow him.  We’ll spend the coming weeks looking at what it means to take up this call, but it’s really something we do all of our lives.

Prepare the way of the Lord was the call of the prophet.  In this scene, we have the one who makes the way.  The one who is the way.  The one through whom God brings us back to Himself 

The one who is perfectly in tune with his Father.  We have this beautiful scene as Jesus is coming up out of the water.  Many had undergone John’s baptism, but none with this result.  As Jesus is coming up, the heavens are coming down.  Heaven is meeting earth, as it were, united by the Son of God.  We have an answer to Isaiah’s cry of lament that we looked at before Christmas – “Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”  We have a picture of the unity between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.  “And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him.  And a voice from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’”

Friends, let us hear ourselves addressed in those words as we identify with the one who has identified himself with us.  You hear talk on the news I was talking about earlier about things like identity politics.  We are tempted to base our identity and our worth on any one of a number of things.  In hearing this story, we’re invited to claim our identity in Christ as beloved children of God.  You are my beloved daughter; with you, I am well pleased.  You are my beloved son; with you, I am well pleased.

Over these next seven weeks, may our turning toward God make us ever more aware of this truth.  This good news.  May our consideration of what kind of Messiah this is, and what it means to follow him, bring us ever closer to the one who loves us.  May these things be true for us all.

Amen

“Whose power is at work in the world?” is another way to put it.  Money?  Aggression?  Acquisition?  Fame?  The crowd in Lystra was getting it wrong.  We who follow Christ can get it wrong, too, in terms of our devotion to Christ.  We talked about single-hearted devotion last week.  We talked about the prayer “Give me eyes to see as you see, Lord.”  In Psalm 86:11, we have this wonderful prayer: “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart to revere your name.”  That’s a good thing to pray for ourselves.  Let’s come before God in prayer as we look at the story of Paul and Barnabas in Lystra.

Paul and Barnabas are on the first missionary journey recorded in the books of Acts.  Last time we encountered them, they were in Cyprus.  They’ve sailed back to the mainland and spent time in Antioch and Iconium.  They’ve preached at synagogues in both cities.  The word of the Lord (as Luke calls the good news of Jesus) is spreading.  At the same time, trouble arises.  Persecution, mistreatment, attempts on their lives.  In the verse that precedes our text this mornin,g we read, “the apostles learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding country; and there they continued proclaiming the good news.” (14:6-7)    

One thing we don’t hear about in Lystra is Paul and Barnabas going to the synagogue.  It’s because there is no synagogue in Lystra.  The good news is being proclaimed here in a place which is largely unfamiliar with God’s story.

What is not unfamiliar is how God’s story is unfolding.  To follow Jesus is to be given a new way to see – a new view of the world.  To follow Jesus is to be given a whole new way of being – a new way of walking.  In Lystra, there was a man sitting who could not use his feet and had never walked, for he had been crippled at birth.  We hear this, and we hear the echoes of Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate.  We hear echoes of Jesus telling a man who is paralyzed, “I say to you, stand up and take up your bed and go to your home.”  The man is listening to Paul.  We have Paul looking intently at him, and again, we have this intent and attentive look that we hear throughout Luke and throughout Acts.  Paul sees that the man has faith to be healed and says in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.”  The man sprang up and began to walk.

And it is so far so good.  Paul’s first public miracle!

The crowd gets excited.  They’re shouting in the Lycaonian language.  Paul and Barnabas have no idea what they’re saying.  They’re seeing this positive reaction and are possibly looking at one another, going, “This spreading the good news thing is going great!  Look at this response to this miracle of God!” 

What Barnabas and Paul don’t know (as they don’t speak Lyconian) is that the crowd is calling Barnabas, Zeus and Paul, Hermes (the messenger god, maybe as Paul was doing most of the talking).  The gods have come down to us in human form!  They had heard about this kind of thing in Lycaonia.  There’s a story written by Ovid about the same area in which two Zeus and Hermes come to earth in human form and look for hospitality in the area.  They’re rebuffed everywhere until they come to the home of an elderly couple.  The couple takes them in and offers them a welcome.  In the ensuing destruction of the area, the couple and their home are spared.  Perhaps the Lycaonians don’t want to make the same mistake.

There’s a temple of Zeus just outside of town.  The priest of Zeus brings oxen and garlands to the gates in order to offer a sacrifice to the two men.  At which point Paul and Barnabas realize what’s going on.  The people of Lystra have mistaken Paul and Barnabas for gods.

Everything had been going along great.  Now we’re at the problem point.  It’s not just a problem for the ancient Lycaonians either.  That question that we asked at the start of all this is still operative.  Who are what are we going to serve?   Who or what are we going to worship?

Every single person is going to worship.  The problem point arises when worship is misdirected.  Misdirected worship is a matter to grieve.  This is what the tearing of clothes meant in the culture of Paul of Barnabas.  They came from a long line of people who tore their clothes to signify grief.  Misdirected worship is a matter to grieve.  Misdirected worship is a matter to be aware of and beware of.  At the same time, we remember God’s grace and mercy, and the power of the Holy Spirit to transform. This story is not just to cause us to shake our heads at the people of Lystra and say, “Oxen and garland!  Can you imagine?”

We don’t need to imagine because it’s all around us.  This is the issue in our story right now.  Worship of the creator is being confused with worship of what the creator has made.  Paul and Barnabas rush into the crowd shouting, and now everyone is shouting, and they need to strain to make their voices heard, and their message is “Friends, why are you doing this?  We are mortals just like you…”

We’ve talked about points of contact before in this series.  Points of contact we have with the wider culture in which we live.  Points of agreement that are common to the human condition in many ways.  We’ve talked about the idea that we have been created to be a part of something larger than ourselves.  The idea that something has gone wrong; that humanity needs help.  The idea that we have been created to worship something.  The message of Paul here is that this worship has been misdirected.  Worship is directed to what has been created rather than the Creator.  It is God our creator, to whom worship, and allegiance, and devotion is proper and fitting.

There are obvious ways in which we get this wrong.  We get religious about professional sports and treasure relics - sticks and jerseys and trophies – and keep them in hushed rooms in venerated halls of fame.  We’re familiar with the celebrity cult.  Screen idols to whom we look for entertainment, distraction, or influence.   I have to say, the more I’m coming to view things through a Kingdom lens, the more bizarre the celebrity-industrial complex or the sports-industrial complex looks.  This is what God is doing in my heart; it’s not me.  I like sports after all.  The point is that question “Why are we doing this?”

We do well to be aware of what would misdirect our worship.  Preparing for today, I read a story of a North American woman working in Nepal.  Travelling along a highway that ran alongside the foot of a mountain.  At one point, the road made a detour, a loop away from the mountain and back.  She was told that at some point in the past, a rock had slid down and come to rest at the foot of the mountain.  The rock was thought to be sacred, and so the road was built around it.  This had become such a fact of life and how life was constructed that it wasn’t even noticed anymore.  The question for us is what are our stones?  The things that we consider sacred to the point where we adjust our lives to accommodate them.  Ourselves?  The acquisition of money?  Family? Education?  Not every idol is in and of itself a bad thing after all.  Patriotism?  Body image?  Perfection?  Beauty?  Reason?  We could go on and on.

Into the midst of this, the voice of Paul rings down through the centuries.   “We bring you good news, that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.”  Paul turns to what’s called Natural Theology.  There is a witness to God in creation itself.  The people of Lystra didn’t have the witness of the story of God as it was recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, remember.  This is where Paul starts, because it’s important for us to know the people with whom we’re talking.  He appeals to their experience – which is really the experience of everyone, no matter what we know or believe about God – “the living God who made the heaven and the earth and all that is in them, giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons (God sustaining and providing) and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.”  All these things are from God.  Paul never has the chance in this scene, but if he had, he might have gone on to say how in Christ this same God was reconciling the world to himself.    The good news.  This is the one who is worthy of all our adoration, all our praise, all our love.

Let not our love be misplaced.  A misunderstanding occurs here, which Paul and Barnabas take care to correct.  The crowd wants to worship Paul and Barnabas.  “We are mortals just like you,” Paul tells them.  It’s not about us.  It’s certainly not about me.  Don’t let us distort the good news of Jesus for others by thinking that our righteousness is about ourselves.  For how many has the path to Jesus been made crooked because of the self-righteousness of his followers?  Do not let Christian leaders think that it is primarily about them and the adulation and praise that can go along with being a Christian leader.  It’s not primarily about a human leader.  May every member of every faith community remember that it is not all about us and our personal wants or desires or takes on things or need to be in charge or need to control or however we want to make it all about me and distort the message.  The creep of self-idolatry can even come into our worship together.  When we are sent from worship together, our primary question about our worship should be, “Was this pleasing to God?”  Not primarily “What did I get out of this worship?” or “How did this worship together make me feel?”  Not that we don’t want to be built up together in our worship or do things as well as we can do them.  We make sure our instruments are tuned every Sunday.  More foundationally important are hearts in worship that are in tune with God’s heart.  

Things will go well for us then, yes?  Not necessarily.  We see opposition to the good news throughout Acts.  Opposition coming from within and without.  Here it is from without.  Paul ends up being stoned and dragged out of the city, left for dead.  But when the disciples surround him, he gets up and goes back into the city, from where he’ll leave with Barnabas to Derbe.  As someone has said, “The journey of the Gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth is unstoppable but uncomfortable.”  Amen to that.  It goes on, though, and continues to spread.  May God give us the desire to continue in the rhythms of life which keep us holding fast to him, which keep our worship from getting misdirected.  Rhythms of worship together, gathering around the Lord’s table together, learning together, personal prayer, personally getting into God’s word (and we have the chance this Lenten season with a daily reading if we’re not already doing that).  May God enable us to ever more deeply understand what it means to turn from these worthless things to the living God, and by our words and our deeds to extend that invitation to others.  May these things be true for us all.

Amen

Empowered by the Holy Spirit of God living in us, the church has a vital role to play in the spreading of the word of God.  We read this at the end of chapter 12 – “Then after completing their mission Barnabas and Saul returned to Jerusalem and brought with them John whose other name was Mark.” (12:25).  The next part of our story focuses on the mission of Paul and Barnabas.  We read in our story today about opposition to the mission.  Mission and opposition is where we are in chapter 13.

Depending on who we are, we might have different feelings about opposition or confrontation.  We might want to avoid confrontation at all costs.  We might like confrontation a little too much.  We see in our story today that there is a time for confrontation of powers and forces that act in direct opposition to the love, will, and truth of God.  May followers of Christ be known by what we are for in Christ – mercy, grace, compassion, flourishing for all, justice.  At the same time, we are called to speak and act against fear, greed, self-absorption, vengeance, scorn, etc., etc.  To believe foundationally that the deliverance and help and hope of all humanity is in Christ alone is to say at the same time that anything else which claims to be a foundational source of help is false.

The story speaks to the call of the church to be a peculiar people.  To be set apart.  Part of the peculiarity for those who follow Christ is that Christ alone is worthy of and commands our complete allegiance.  This means that there are situations which do not call for compromise or accommodation.  For Saul and Barnabas, this was one such situation.  In his Acts commentary, NT Wright puts it like this: “… we would very much prefer the story to be one of gentle persuasion rather than confrontation.  We would have liked it better if Paul had gone about telling people the simple message of Jesus and finding that many people were happy to accept it and live by it.  But life is seldom that straightforward, and people who try to pretend it is often end up simply pulling the wool over their own eyes.  It’s a murky world out there, and though the choice of compromise is always available in every profession (not least in the church), there is in fact no real choice.”  “What’s the point of trying to swim with one foot on the bottom of the pool…” Wright goes on, taking Jesus with a bit of magic/nationalism/consumerism/the kingdom of me - never venturing out of our own depth, never trusting in something beyond ourselves – as opposed to swimming out trustingly in the waters of grace and mercy and help.  Trusting in pure, unadulterated, undiluted Jesus.

It’s the first missionary journey of Saul and Barnabas.  The mission is launched from Antioch.    The last time we encountered Saul, he’d just met Jesus on the road to Damascus.  Shortly after that, he effects an escape from the city by being lowered in a basket over the city wall.  He goes to Jerusalem.  His life is once again endangered, and the believers in Jerusalem send him to Tarsus.  In the meantime, Antioch has become a big centre for the early church.  The place believers in Christ were first called “Christians.”  Barnabas – the son of encouragement we encountered weeks ago – the Cypriot, the man who sold the field and gave all the proceeds to the church to do with as they saw fit – is sent to Antioch and we read that when he came and saw the grace of God he rejoiced and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast devotion, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith (11:23-24).  Barnabas goes to Tarsus, brings Saul back to Antioch with him,  and the two were guests of the church and taught a great many people.

And now we’re caught up.

This was a sending church in Antioch.  Directed by the Spirit of God, they send Barnabas and Saul on their first journey, which means it’s time for a map.  Their first destination is Cyprus, which makes sense.  Barnabas was from there.  Before we look at their experience on Cyprus, though, I want to take a look at the marks of the sending church that we read in chapter 13.  Whether we’re talking about sending and supporting people overseas or locally, or ourselves being sent from this place weekly, what are the things that mark the sending church?

The church wants to learn, and they want to hear what God has to say to them.  There were prophets and teachers.  Remember how the Jerusalem church devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.  This practice is still in effect.  They wanted to come to an ever greater understanding of the nature of God and the nature of the story that we are caught up as followers of Christ.  There are prophets.  People are inspired by the Holy Spirit to bring words from God.  We’ve said many times that prophecy in the Bible is not simply a matter of foretelling – speaking of future events – but forthtelling, speaking about practices that reflect the ways of God and practices which are opposed to the ways of God.

They were generous.  They were generous.  God inspired generous hearts.  The church in Antioch supported famine relief in Judea (ch 11).  They were generous with their people, sending them out and not keeping people like Saul and Barnabas to themselves.  They were generous in their hospitality and welcoming of people.

They were ethnically and socioeconomically diverse.  A Cypriot.  Simeon Niger (literally Simeon Black).  Lucius from Cyrene in North Africa. Manaen – a member of a king’s court..  And Saul.  We are given a new identity in Christ and are welcomed into a family.  This is what was happening in the church of Antioch.

They worshipped the Lord together. They fasted together.  They prayed together.  We see God as the prime mover in the story.  The Holy Spirit speaking.  The Holy Spirit sending. We see the church taking part in God’s activity among them.  Seeking to discern God’s will together in worshipping, praying, and fasting.  Laying hands on the two and sending them off, or releasing them.  Luke reminding us right after that they are sent out by the Holy Spirit.  They went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.  The home of Barnabas.  It seems like a sensible place to start. 

After arriving at Salamis and proclaiming the words of God in the synagogues there (with the help of John Mark), Barnabas and Saul go across the island and come to Paphos.  They meet two men.  Sergius Paulus governs the place on behalf of Rome.  Luke tells us that he wants to hear the word of God.  Bar-Jesus.  Nothing to do with Jesus – it was a common enough Jewish name.  Yeshua in Hebrew.  Bar is “son of”.   Jewish.  A false prophet.  A magician.   Not a magician like Penn and Teller, but one who claimed to be able to commune with spirits and tell the future.  Not an uncommon thing in those times for officials to have such people in their employ.  As far as Judaism went, Elymas (as he was also known) was a renegade.  Communing with the dead and fortune telling was most anti-Torah.  Deuteronomy 18:10-11.  Such things work in direct opposition to the truth of the sufficiency of God.  A desire to know the future and someone purporting to be able to divine the future (and it’s interesting that we use the word “divine” because what is that but taking on the role of the divine) is getting in the way.  Bar-Jesus or Elymas is opposing the message of Christ, which Barnabas and Saul are bringing, and he is trying to turn the governor away from the faith.  “What is the big deal with consulting 1800 California Psychics?” we might ask.  By what criteria are we to discern what is and what is not ok as followers of Christ?

This brings us to an underlying message here.  It’s a message that runs throughout the book of Acts, and indeed it runs throughout our faith.  It’s about the sufficiency of Christ.  The message goes like this, as someone has put it – “The very nature of the gospel renders problematic and subservient any relationship other than the relationship of the believer to Christ.”

In Christ alone our hope is found.

Every other thing in the world that claims to save you or deliver you or bring you peace and joy or whatever claim is being made is to be held up in light of this claim.  In Christ alone our hope is found.  On this, we do not and will not compromise. 

What does this look like in our lives?  It may still mean a desire to know the future or hear from the dead.  Psychics and mediums (media?) are still popular.  It may be a little less obvious.  The temptation to compromise or accommodation in our faith may look something more like mixing our Christianity with a dash of consumerism, or a pinch of nationalism, or a cup of my life is a movie starring me.

We’re talking about the sufficiency of Christ.  In Luke’s day, there was a widespread belief that we find our security in the state, the empire, in those days.  The state was your peace, and all things were subservient to the state.  This kind of belief is not just restricted to the ancient world, of course, though it’s maybe not so much about the state now.  There’s been a waning in the belief that it will be government policy or a political party that will bring us peace.  “From where does our help come?” is the question we considered last week (and let us keep on considering it).  As we consider how fragmented and siloed opinions are these days, it’s hard to say that there’s any consensus answer to the question “From where will our help come?”

The message is the same.  Barnabas and Saul brought it.  The Psalmist sang it.  My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.  The good news is that Jesus is Lord and Jesus is our help and our peace.

False prophets cry peace when there is no peace.  What are some of the claims that are made with regard to what will bring us peace, help, and security?  We need to be aware of them and act and speak out against them when we’re called to.  The devil is known as the liar after all.  Where are we being called to speak truth and live out truth?  It might sound harsh to our ears for Saul to say to Elymas, “You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?”  Elymas was acting in direct opposition to the plan of Go,d and Saul named it.  We can ask the question of ourselves, “Are we making straight paths for the advancement of the word of God?”  Are we speaking of and living out the sufficiency of Jesus for life now and life to come?  Openness to the message can be found in the most unexpected places – like a Roman proconsul or a Roman centurion.  Opposition can be found in the most unlikely places.  It might come from within our own ranks.  It might come from within ourselves if we examine ourselves honestly enough.  We are all people in need of grace and transformation.

Saul calls it out and makes a prophecy of his own.  Elymas will go blind. Harsh.  It will be a reflection of his spiritual blindness.  Only for a while, though.  And remember what happened to the last guy who was blinded by the light in our story and had to be led by the hand for a little while.  There is hope for anyone, even Saul.  Even Elymas.  Even me.  We keep praying, “Lord help me to see.”

The story ends with amazement and belief.  The proconsul saw what had happened.  He believed.  He was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.  This should be reminding us of someone else who amazed with his deeds and teaching.  Mark 1:27.  Saul will be known as Paul from here on out.   Paul used to be like Elymas in being blind.  Now he’s reflecting Jesus and the ways of Jesus.    The sufficiency of God, Christ, the Spirit, to form us in the image of Christ as we follow him.  May the Spirit of God continue to work in us to give us the will and opportunity to make the good news of Jesus known in demonstration and proclamation, the courage to call out what is false, and the strength to hold on to the hope that is ours.  May these things be true for us all.

The good news is that conversion/transforming/turning toward God is possible for us because God, in God’s infinite grace, has turned toward us in the person of Christ Jesus.  And so the invitation before us all is to respond, “I am yours, Lord.”   We are interrupted by grace to be interruptors to the usual order of things or the way of the world, if you like.  There is a great line in Acts 17:6 where Paul and Silas are in Thessalonica.  A riot breaks out, and we read this.  “When they could not find them (Paul and Silas) they dragged Jason and some believers before the city authorities shouting, “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has entertained them as guests. They are acting against the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus.” (17:6-7)

That’s right! That’s what we say!  In order for God to be turning things upside down through us, we need to be turned upside down (which again is really right side up).  We need to be turned right side up.  I need that.  I want that.  Help is at hand in the one who is Lord of all.  I want us to consider this question in light of the story that we’ve read and the stories that we are living.  What does it mean that Jesus is Lord of all?

I have said that the conversion of Saul in chapter 9 and Peter’s encounter with Cornelius and his household are big moments in the book of Acts.  After this, the good news of Christ is going to spread throughout the Gentile world.  This is what has been happening geographically.  We remember Jesus’ promise/command “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (1:8)

I know Torontonians like to think of our city as the centre of the universe.  Acts is going to end in the city that really was the centre of it all.  Rome.  The power of the empire was concentrated there.  In our story, we have a representative of the Roman army.  Cornelius.  A centurion.  Generally, these men had served anywhere from 12 to 20 years.  They were men of good standing, with authority and the power of Rome behind them.  Cornelius is a member of the Italian Cohort, living in the thoroughly Roman port city of Caesarea. A city named after the emperor.  The place where the governor of Judea stayed.  The Romans had built a harbour to facilitate trade.  This place was a big deal, and Cornelius was a big deal.  He was the man, as we say.  He was also a part of an occupying army.

Here’s the thing about Cornelius, though.  This man was devout.  He feared God with all his household.  He gave alms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God.  God’s hand is at work here. At our Wednesday Bible study, one of the Blythwood saints reminded us, “Our times are in God’s hand.”  No matter what is going on, good or bad, our times are in God’s hands.  God was at work in the heart of Cornelius long before Peter ever came on the scene.  While Cornelius hadn’t gone through the process of becoming Jewish, he was devout.  He feared God.  He gave alms.  He prayed.  Cornelius has a vision in which an angel of God tells him to send for Simon Peter, who is staying with Simon Tanner.  Cornelius sends two slaves along with a devout soldier to make the journey south.

While they are on their way, the scene switches to Peter.  It’s noon, and Peter is hungry.  He goes up on the rooftop to pray.  He falls into a trance and sees the heavens opened and a large sheet  coming down with all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air   A good vision for someone who is hungry, along with the voice that says “Get up Peter (which reminds us of the invitation Peter extended last week – Get up!), kill and eat.”  So far, so good, except for the fact that there are four-footed creatures, reptiles, and birds of the air that Peter isn’t supposed to eat.  “By no means,” says Peter, “for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.”

This is not just a matter of personal preference or even personal piety.  This was something that marked Jewish identity. These were commands given by God to mark the fact that the people of Israel were set apart by God for a purpose.  This was a matter of identity and communal survival.

Here’s the thing, though.  In Jesus, those belonging to the Way are given a new identity which is not based on food regulations or ethnicity or culture or socio-economic status or any of the identity markers by which we separate and rank ourselves.  A new situation has come about.  The foundational mark of our identity in Jesus is beloved children of God!  We are sisters and brothers in Jesus, the one in whom the grace and mercy of God meet us. This good news is for everyone. 

Peter hears the message - “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”  The thing is, God is not just talking about what we eat here.  It’s not just about food, it’s about people!  Speaking of which, here come the messengers from Cornelius.  They’re calling out at the gate, asking if Simon Peter is there.  Peter is still thinking about the vision.  A voice tells him “Now get up, go down, and go with them without hesitation, for I have sent them.”  Peter goes. “I am the one you are looking for. What is the reason for your coming?”  They tell him.  Peter invites them in.  

Peter invites them in.  A boundary is being broken here. Having Gentiles in your home was not standard practice.  I want to pause here for a moment and consider the importance of the invitations being offered and accepted in this story.  I like to ask the question, “How are we doing with offering invitations?  How are we doing with accepting invitations?”  Maybe they involve unexpected people or places.  How might the hand of God be at work in the invitations we extend and which are extended to us?

Peter invites these men to stay.  The next day, they got up and went, and some of the believers from Joppa went with them to Caesarea.  They come to Cornelius’ Roman villa.  Wonderfully, Cornelius has called together his relatives and close friends.  They’re all waiting.  Cornelius - this man of means and experience and authority, meets Peter, falls at Peter’s feet.  Cornelius is looking to worship.  He’s found that means and experience and imperial power have left him rather empty.  Cornelius falls at Peter’s feet and worships him!  Perhaps Cornelius thought Peter was another angel.  “Stand up,” says Peter, “I am only a mortal.”  I’m just a man!  As he talked to Cornelius, he went into the house and found that many had assembled.

Peter comes walking in, and in effect, he’s saying, “You know I’m not even supposed to be doing this?!”  “You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection.  Now, may I ask why you sent for me?” 

At this point, Cornelius shares about his own vision.  Cornelius tells Peter that Peter has been kind to come.  The kindness of accepting an invitation.  “All of us are here in the presence of God to listen to all that the Lord has commanded you to say.”  What an intro!  Then Peter begins to speak.

Here we have another momentous line in our story.  “I truly understand that God shows no partiality…”  This idea was not unknown.  Addressing the nation of Israel in Deuteronomy 10, God tells them to look after foreigners within Israel -  “¹⁷ For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. ¹⁸ He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. ¹⁹ And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.  This truth has been expanded now to include every nation and everyone.  “…but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”  This is not to proclaim some sort of “anything goes” mentality on God’s part, but to proclaim that belief in Christ and forgiveness of sin in the name of Christ is open to all.  “You know the message he sent to the people of Israel,” tells Peter, “Preaching peace by Jesus Christ.”  Right relationship with God, right relationship with humanity and all of creation in Christ.  Open to all in the one who is Lord of all.

I truly understand this now, says Peter.  A moment of conversion for Peter.  This man who had taken up Christ’s invitation to follow him.   This man who had confessed to the risen Christ “You know I love you.”  This man, who had proclaimed to the people of Jerusalem that Jesus is Lord of all.  This man has come to understand in a whole new way what it means that Jesus is Lord of all.  That a right relationship with God through Christ is not dependent on labels or any of the ways in which we differentiate and separate ourselves and others.  God has brought Peter to a new understanding of the wideness of God’s mercy.  If you’ve followed Christ for any significant length of time, you may identify with Peter’s moment of conversion here.  I’ve probably had 4 of them so far. 

Peter tells the story of Jesus in verses 34-43, and someone has summarized it like this: “Cornelius: the God whom you have worshipped from afar has done all this; as part of his global plan to set everything right at last; and, at every stage, Jesus is in the middle of it all!  God has thus fulfilled the purposes for which he called Israel in the first place; and you, Cornelius, and everyone everywhere who believes this message, will receive a welcome at once, without more ado, into the family whose home has, written in shining letters above the door, the wonderful word ‘forgiven’.”

This is why we call it the good news!

Jesus is Lord of all.  Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.  All.  Everyone.  What does this mean in terms of who we welcomed and who welcomed us?  What does this mean in terms of what defines our identity and what defines our commonality – particularly in a world which so often wants to divide us and separate us into polarized camps or tribes?

This is what it means for this group of people in Cornelius’ villa.  Peter doesn’t even get a chance to finish.  They don’t get a chance to make a profession of faith, even.  The Holy Spirit comes upon this group of Gentiles.  Peter and his fellow Jewish followers of Christ are astounded to hear them speaking in tongues and praising God.  “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” The Holy Spirit.  Our common bond.  This tie that binds our hearts in the love of Christ - one heart to another.  They are baptized in the name of Jesus, who is Lord of All.

Then they invited him to stay for several days and Peter stays with them for several days. Staying in a Gentile’s house!  Unheard of?  No longer!  They’re together for several days.  All as a result of God’s grace and the hand of God at work.  They spend several days together.  Conversion is not the end of faith but its beginning.  One of the things it begins with is life together.  They invited him to stay for several days because we’re not called to live the Christ-following life on our own, whether we’re at the beginning, middle, or end of it.

Throughout this story, invitations have been extended, and invitations have been accepted.  Thanks be to God who shows no partiality for inviting us into God’s family.  We are forgiven.  May the Holy Spirit give us thankful and responsive hearts in the light of God’s great gift of grace in the person of Christ Jesus.

Amen

So hear these words and be encouraged this day.  They come from the end of the story Luke tells in Acts 12.  “But the word of God continued to advance and gain adherents.”  The word of God continued to advance.  The plan of God continued to advance, and the plan of God continues to advance.  In the midst of tyranny and state-sponsored violence.  In the midst of tyrants being tyrannical.  Tyrants are going to tyrannize.  It’s what they do.

Tyrants don’t have the last word, though. So we have the opportunity this 1^st day of February 2026 to remember and to answer the question together.  From where does my/your/our help come?  We have the opportunity today to say along with the Psalmist, “My help comes from the Lord.”  We’ve been asking, “What does it mean to confess that Jesus is Lord of all?”  We have the opportunity to pledge allegiance to our King together at his table.  To say “I belong to you.”  To say Jesus is our Lord signifies that a lot of other things aren’t our lord.  To say “Jesus is Lord” is to say that our deliverance, our freedom, our peace, our hope, our surety, our help, is in him.

This truth affects how we see history.  Is it true that history is written by the victors?   How are we, who are in Christ, called to view historic events?  We are living in the middle of historic events right now.  We even had a historic snowfall in Toronto last week.  Being middle-aged, I feel that I can talk about this from the middle in terms of where you all are (either ahead of me or behind me).  Indulge me for a few moments. As followers of Jesus, we have our heads up and our eyes wide open.  Staying awake and alert, as Jesus said.  A generation before my birth in 1970, we had the post-WWII rules-based order.  The creation of the United Nations.  The balance of power held between the Eastern and Western blocs.  In my own lifetime, we saw the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The End of History, as it was described by one political scientist.  Optimism abounded.  The theoretical triumph of liberal democracy.  I’m not saying any of these things is good or bad – this is not my purpose here.  The question I am posing is “From where comes our help?”  Technologically speaking, we saw the rise of the information age in the 90’s.  Not long after came the events of Sept 11, 2001, and all that ensued.  Not long after that, the rise of China and Russia.  Technologically speaking, the rise of social media in the last decade.  Which brings us to today.  The rupture of the international rules-based order, as someone said recently.  The rise of AI.  How do we see all this?  What should we do?

Take heart o follower of Jesus (and if you are not a follower of Jesus hear the invitation to get behind him with us).  We have a language for this kind of situation.  There’s a song that goes “The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter.”  The song goes “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea.” (Ps 46)

Though state-sponsored violence is all around us.  Though tyranny seems to be the order of the day.  We are invited to see history through God’s eyes.  Look at what this meant for the church in Jerusalem in Acts 12.  “About that time King Herod laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church.  He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword.” (12:1) State-sponsored violence in the name of… national security?  Public order?  A lot of evil can be done in the name of national security or public order.  James wasn’t a threat to anyone.  Apart from the threat which the follower of Jesus represents to any system/form of government/nation state that would demand his or her ultimate allegiance.  We have another allegiance after all.  James hadn’t done anything to deserve being put to the sword.  James, the brother of John.  The sons of thunder, as Jesus called them.  James had learned a lot from Jesus along with his brother John.  Now he was dead.  He didn’t deserve it.  They killed him.

On the order of King Herod.  Herod Antipas, as he was known.  The grandson of Herod the Great, whom we know from the story of Jesus’ birth.  Herod Antipas had been sent to Rome as a child.  He grew up close to the imperial family.  He knew Caligula and went to school with Claudiu,s who made him ruler over Judea and Samaria.  A client-king, as we call one who rules by the power of a foreign empire or nation.  He was well thought of locally for restoring the practice of sacrifice at the Jerusalem temple.  He was cruel and oppressive.  A tyrant who thought little of killing in the name of… 

He’s killed James.  Take out the leaders, and you’ll put an end to the movement, right? We remember that an earlier persecution made the disciples scatter.  The apostles – those who had spent all that time with Jesus – remained.  This small group and those still with them hear the news.  Seeing how popular the James move was, Herod had Peter arrested during the festival of unleavened bread.  We need to pause here and note what is going on.  This is all happening during the Passover, which celebrates the deliverance of a people by God from a tyrannical Egyptian king!  The original “the tyrant doesn’t win in the end” story.  The original deliverance/salvation/help story!  Keep this in mind.

   From where does our help come, dear church?  They’ve taken Peter now, and they plan to bring him out after the Passover.  They want to kill him, too?  What does the church do in response to this heartbreaking news?  What don’t they do first of all?  They don’t arm up and mount a rescue mission.  Jesus had already told them that the way of the sword wasn’t for them after all.  “No more of this!” Jesus said when one of them lashed out with a sword at Jesus’ arrest.  This isn’t the way of the kingdom.  “While Peter was kept in prison, the church prayed fervently to God for him.”  They prayed.  How am I doing with that?  How are we doing with that?  Prayer is not all we’re called to when it comes to deliverance/freedom from oppression, and we’ll get to the other thing in a little while.  We are called to pray fervently.  Alone.  Together in worship.  Together in smaller groups.  Pray.  For what?  Pray that the ways of God would be made known.  Pray that tyrants would be brought down.  Pray for release for those who are oppressed (literally and figuratively).  Pray that rulers would lead in justice and righteousness.  Pray that the hearts of all would look to God for their help.  Pray, “Even so, Lord Jesus come.”  Just.  Pray.  The church was in the habit of praying in the evening, according to our story.  Pray with me this Wednesday evening on Zoom from 7-8 pm!  Drop in and out if time is short.  Let’s pray for justice together and talk about how we can do more of that. The church prayed fervently to God for Peter.  Release comes literally for Peter.  Literal release doesn’t always come on this side of the renewal of all things.  Literal release didn’t come for James, and we can’t claim to know why.  Literal release comes for Peter, but he’ll be killed for his faith later in life, according to church history.  Our God is a God of deliveranc, and release comes for Peter in the form of an angel.  Peter is bound with chains between two soldiers:

7 Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared, and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, ‘Get up quickly.’ And the chains fell off his wrists. 8 The angel said to him, ‘Fasten your belt and put on your sandals.’ He did so. Then he said to him, ‘Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.’ 9 Peter[a] went out and followed him; he did not realize that what was happening with the angel’s help was real; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 After they had passed the first and the second guard, they came before the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went outside and walked along a lane, when suddenly the angel left him. 11 Then Peter came to himself and said, ‘Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hands of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.’

Even Peter wasn’t expecting this!  He thought it was a vision at first.  He did not realize that what was happening with the angel’s help was real.  Can “My help comes from the Lord?” really be real?  Deliverance, saving, security, peace.  Can this be real?  There’s this image of iron running through this passage.  The iron of oppression.  The sword with which James was killed.  The iron chains by which Peter was trapped.  The iron gate that opens on its own.  Here’s the thing about the iron of oppression.  Whether it’s in the form of swords, guns, chains, handcuffs, prison bars, warplanes, missiles, tanks, bombs:  THE IRON OF OPRESSION WILL NOT STAND AGAINST THE WOOD OF THE CROSS.

Are we out of our minds?  Out of our minds like a fox.  A peaceful fox.  Peter goes to the house of Mary, mother of John Mark, where many had gathered and were praying:

13 When he knocked at the outer gate, a maid named Rhoda came to answer. 14 On recognizing Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed that, instead of opening the gate, she ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the gate. 15 They said to her, ‘You are out of your mind!’ But she insisted that it was so. They said, ‘It is his angel.’ 16 Meanwhile, Peter continued knocking, and when they opened the gate, they saw him and were amazed. 17 He motioned to them with his hand to be silent, and described for them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he added, ‘Tell this to James and to the believers.’[b] Then he left and went to another place.

They didn’t believe Rhoda.  “You are out of your mind!” they said. This group of people who believed in deliverance in Jesus did not recognize deliverance when it was at their door.  Let’s not be too hard on them, though.  All of us need to be coming to a deeper understanding of what it means to say “My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.”  It’s easy to be swayed when the messaging is all around us in terms of where our help comes from.  The power and strength of the state.  National security.  Trade agreements. The market.  Tech.  The algorithm. 

My help comes from the Lord.  Rhoda recognized him immediately, and she was so excited she forgot to let Peter in!  In the face of historic events, we are called like Rhoda to announce that deliverance is at hand – help is at hand – in the person of the living/dying/risen/ascended/returning Christ Jesus.  To let this truth be known in our words and in our deeds.  To let this truth be known, even when we’re told “You must be out of your mind!”  I’ve never been more in my right mind, and the Spirit’s making it righter all the time.  To let it be known in what we say, do, buy, sell, give away, and keep.  Deliverance is at the door!

We gather together to remember and hear the truth.  The tyrant does not have the last word.  Peter goes to an undisclosed location for his own safety, presumably.  Herod has a meeting with the people of Tyre and Sidon, cities on the coast in modern-day Lebanon.  They depended on the king’s country for food, Luke tells us.  Jewish historian Josephus tells this story.  It happened in Caesarea in the stadium there.  Herod puts on his royal robes.  Jospehus says they were silver, gleaming in the sun.  “He’s like a god,” they said.  He spoke so well that the people kept shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a mortal!”  It’s easy to believe your own hype I suppose when you start to think people are depending on you.  They depended on the king for food after all.  Not hard to conclude something like “You live because of me.”  I live in and by the grace of God, and I will die in the grace of God.  It’s easy to get deluded, I suppose, when, as a ruler or authority, you start to think that you hold the power of life and death in your hands.  “He’s like a god, and not a mortal, “they said.  Herod doesn’t try to convince them otherwise (and we remember good old Peter last week telling Cornelius, “Stand up, I’m only a mortal.”)  It will not go well for any ruler who takes the place of God.  “Tell them God Almighty’s gonna cut you down,” as one song goes.  “And immediately, because he had not given glory to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.”  A severe pain arose in his stomach, and he died five days later in his 54^th year.

But the word of God continued to advance and gain adherents.  The plan of God to make all things right goes on.  From where does our help come?  Our help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth, to whom we pledge trust and allegiance as we gather at his table.  Thanks be to God for his truth.

Life interrupted in order that I may be an interruption – that we may be an interruption to the usual order of things.  In the middle of all the challenges we face in our personal lives, that we may know capital L life as in the way the truth and the life.  In the middle of the state of the world and all the fragmentation and enmity and uncertainty and suspicion, we are not called to despair, resignation, or indifference.   We’re called and enabled in the Spirit of Christ to interrupt.  To disrupt.  To make a difference.  To stand even in the face of death, like those friends of Tabitha, and say, “Look at what she made.”  Look at these clothes that she made for us.  “Look at how she helped us,” cried those widows.  Widows need help.  Tabitha was devoted to good works and acts of charity – acts of mercy and justice which are made tangible in the clothes that she made that were worn by the widows who are grieving her loss.  It’s a sad scene. 

Of course, the sadness is not the end of the story.  Let me interrupt this whole proceeding with a question about the end of the story at this point.  Do you believe that acts of mercy and justice that are enabled in Christ’s followers can carry a significance that goes beyond our death?  Do you believe acts of mercy and justice and kindness and compassion may be of eternal significance in the kingdom of heaven? I want to tell you something about one of our Blythwood saints, who went to be with the Lord on December 29^th 2016.  In the kingdom of heaven, it’s not just about the Peters and the Pauls.  It’s also about the Ananiases.  The Tabithas.  The Gord Borrons.  Gord was not to be out front or make a big deal about what he was called to do in God’s service.  He was a woodworker.  He used this gift in teaching the children here at Blythwood for years.  At his funeral, I showed those gathering one of the things Gord had made.  Candle holders that the choir would use on Christmas Eve at our candlelight service.  It had meaning for us that day at Gord’s funeral.  It has meaning for me as I keep it on my desk.  I don’t know where it will end up one day.  On someone else’s desk or shelf.  In a landfill.  Is it possible that such an act of kindness may have meaning that goes beyond wherever this candle holder ends up?  (Hint – 100%)

In these two encounters, Peter/Aeneas and Peter/Tabitha, the story of the spread of the good news of Jesus is brought down to the personal.  The face-to-face.  The coming alongside of.  We’re talking through this long look at Acts about the work that Jesus began – about the work that Christ’s church is called and enabled in the power of the Holy Spirit to continue.  For Jesus, it was often about the face-to-face.  The woman of Samaria at the well.  Nicodemus coming to talk to Jesus under cover of darkness.  It was the same for the apostles.  We’ve heard about Peter and John and the man at a gate called Beautiful.  We’ve heard about Phillip encountering the Minister of Finance/Treasury Secretary from Ethiopia on a wilderness road in the middle of the day, and, of all things, he was reading from Isaiah.  Who would have thought?” we asked.

These two stories have a function in the wider story of Acts.  They set Peter up geographically on the Mediterranean coast.  Lydda and Joppa.  Next week, we’ll hear about Peter heading north from Jaffa to Caesarea to meet Cornelius.  Peter is going into increasingly Hellenized or Greekified territory.  We are approaching a momentous moment (!) in the Book of Acts, as the good news is about to be poured out for Gentiles in a whole new way.  We are in between two very big events.  The conversion of Saul!  The road to Damascus.  The “I saw the light” moment for Saul.  We’ll be spending a lot of time with him over the coming weeks and months.  Peter meeting a Roman centurion.  Cornelius.  A leader in the Italian regiment.  We’ll get to that story, too.  The big turn of the good news to the Gentile world.  Huge! 

Peter and Paul are major figures, of course, in the history of the church.  Wide influence.  In the kingdom of God, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the wide influence, of course.  Some are called to ministries that have city—wide/province-wide/national/international reach.  At the same time, we remember people like Ananias whose call was to go and meet Saul face to face.  We remember Barnabas, who sold that field and gave all the proceeds to the apostles, who comes back into the story in chapter 9 to vouch for Saul in Jerusalem.  In the middle of momentous events, Luke reminds us who are in Christ, that we are individuals that are called to come alongside and serve individuals. 

Peter is called here to a man who is helpless, bedridden for eight years, paralyzed.  Peter is called to a room upstairs from which life is gone.  Where are we called and what does it look like?

“Now, as Peter went here and there among all the believers, he came down also to the saints living in Lydda.  There he found a man named Aeneas, who had been bedridden for eight years and was paralyzed.”  We don’t know what Aeneas’ faith position was, and you can speculate on that if you’re the type to speculate on such things.  Here is the thing that is beyond speculation, though.  This man was in the grip of a situation from which he was unable to extricate himself.  Peter came alongside his situation.  This is what Jesus did writ large when we’re talking humanity, and this is what Jesus did writ small when we consider his encounters with individuals.  This is the work that Peter proclaims.  Jesus Christ heals you.  This is the truth that Christ’s church – and by Christ’s church I mean us – is enabled by the Spirit and called by Christ to proclaim.  In Jesus, there is fullness of life.  Jesus makes whole.   Jesus heals you.  This is Peter’s message.  Get up and make your bed (and this phrase “make your bed” may also mean “prepare a table”).  You have something to do.  Time to get up and make your bed!  A literal “Get up” here as Aeneas is cured miraculously.  A cure doesn’t always come, as we know, and the getting up may be more metaphorical.  Get up and live out life in Jesus in our words and acts!  The result is all of the residents of Lydda and Sharon (the coastal plain on which these events are happening) saw him and turned to the Lord.  This was big, and people were turning to God because of it.  One commentator puts it like this – “Where there was helplessness, caughtness, and bondage, the word, the name, has created fresh possibility.”

Which was what was needed in nearby Joppa.  Major port town at one time.  The place Jonah sailed from.  Jaffa today.  Famous for its oranges.  Beautiful town on the Mediterranean.  Home of Tabitha.  Dorcas in Greek.  Gazelle.  She was a disciple.  The only use of the female form for disciple in the NT.  No question at all as to her faith position.  A disciple of Christ.  A student of Christ.  An imitator of Christ.  She was devoted to good works and acts of charity.  Devoted to good works and acts of charity.  The Greek word here that’s been translated charity in our Bibles means mercy.  Acts of mercy.  This is what Tabitha did.  She came alongside in need.  We don’t know if Tabitha was a widow herself – again, it’s a matter of speculation.  It’s plausible given her heart for widows.  Her heart is for those who have experienced the most stressful event that life has to offer.  In 1967, two psychiatrists named Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe put together a list of life events that are most stressful.  It’s called the Holmes and Rahe stress scale.  They wanted to study the causes of disease.  Things on the list include incarceration, death of a family member, marriage (!), getting fired, and retiring.  Counting down the top three, they had 3) marital separation, 2) divorce, and 1) death of a spouse.  Number one.

We talk a lot about widows and orphans in the Bible, how widows often faced a lack of support.  They also faced the most stressful situation that people can face.  Into the middle of this came Tabitha.  Whether or not she was a widow herself, the social order was being upended.  We’re not told if these widows took part in this clothing ministry themselves, but there’s no reason to believe that it wasn’t happening. 

Led by Tabitha, who has died.  “So Peter got up and went with them, and when he arrived, they took him to the room upstairs.  All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was with them.”   This is what we do when we are grieving.  We remember.  We cling to objects that remind us of the one who has been lost.  Look at this tunic that she made for me!  Look at this scarf that she made.  For the widows, it’s not just a matter of grieving the death of their friend, but the uncertain future that they now face.

God steps into the situation.  Peter put all of them outside, and then he knelt down and prayed.  He turned to the body and said, “Tabitha, get up.”  Then she opened her eyes, and seeing Peter, she sat up.  He gave her his hand and helped her up.

Because we need help.  We’re not expected to do this life on our own.  We shouldn’t expect others to do it on their own either.  Take my hand.

One who was dead is brought back to life.  This is not an everyday occurrence, to state the obvious.  Here is the message, though.  Death does not have the last word.  In the Kingdom of God, death does not have the last word.  In Jesus ' death, death has been defeated and will one day be defeated, and until that time, the community of Christ’s disciples is to be a community that is characterized by compassion and care.  In a culture that is so often dismissive and uncarin,g we stand for something else.  Widows are not to be left to make it on their own; neither is the stranger, the migrant, the one without clothing, the one without a home, the prisoner.  Christ is risen, He is risen indeed, and to follow Christ is to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.

We know about power, right?  It’s easy to see the difference between the powerful and the powerless.  It’s easy to see economic power, military power, power founded in violence, oppression and destruction.  There’s another power, though, which is truly power.  The power of God.  The power of mercy, of justice, of grace, of self-giving love.  It’s just a tunic, we might say.  It’s just a candle-holder.  Maybe our acts of mercy are less tangible.  Maybe they involve food.  Maybe they involve words of comfort and encouragement.  Might such acts of mercy have significance beyond death and into eternity?  100%.   Look at these verse from Revelation 21, which speaks of that day for which all the earth awaits:  “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.  The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.  Its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there.  People will bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations.” Rev 21:23-26  The nations will bring into it glory and honour.  What is glory in the kingdom of God but making God’s ways known?  The way in which mercy was made known somehow having a significance that goes to Kingdom come.

How many of these acts and words of mercy have I seen through my years at Blythwood?  Countless meals prepared for those sorely in need of a meal.  Baby blankets are being made.  Toques being knitted for those in need.  Words of encouragement and comfort, and the truth of Christ in us, the hope of glory.  Christmas care packages.  Cards.  Phone calls.  Visits. Candle holders.  Every day, people are doing justly and loving mercy and walking humbly with our God. 

May we all be ones who rise – ones who are raised – to good works and acts of mercy.  I’m thankful for such stories and the story we’ve just read.  Same church.  Same Holy Spirit in us.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.   Amen

The first is the image of light.  “Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him,” we read of Paul (and if you haven’t heard “I Saw the Light” by Hank Williams, I recommend it). We have just come through the season of Advent, which in many ways was filled with images of light.  Literally with our candles and Christmas lights and Jesus, the light of the world, and our bearing the light and passing the light to one another and seeing all things in the light of Christ.

As we begin a new year and the idea of getting back into a routine is in play for many (if not all) of us, we have this truth in our story of a life in Christ being a life interrupted.  I mean this in the best possible way.  The interruption of the grace of Jesus being made known to us, which means that life in Christ, or life as those belonging to the Way, is never simply a matter of routine or “same old same old.”  We’re not simply going in circles.  We’re following the Way, and while we are on the way, God has the infinite capacity to surprise and delight us.  Every day. 

We have the opportunity today to hear the risen and ascended Christ call our name!  We have the opportunity to call on his name right back in response.  It may be for the first time, and we pray, “Jesus, I belong to you.  Help me to see by your light.”  It might be the first time in a while, and we may pray “Jesus I belong to you, I want to see again by your light.”  It may be something we pray regularly, and we say, “Jesus, I belong to you.  Help me to keep on seeing by your light.”  No matter where we are as we hear the story today, we’re hearing the story.  We’re here.  It’s a good place to be.

This is one of those stories we may have read many times and have heard preached many times.   It’s one of the most famous stories outside of the  Gospels in the NT.  Luke tells it three times in Acts.  It’s a story that is known to some extent in the larger culture, where we may hear talk of people having a “road to Damascus experience.”

What’s going on here?  We are looking at the story of a life transformed.  The story of a life turned around 180 degrees. This is a story about conversion and a story of Saul’s call.  In a way, Saul’s conversion and call speak to every follower of Jesus.  A transformation of heart – that centre of our being involving mind, thought, emotion, will.  A transformation of purpose – a call to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and your neighbour as yourself.  A call to be light and salt.  A call to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with the God to whom I belong. 

At the same time, it’s Paul’s story.  Saul breathed threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.  We remember him from Stephen’s story when he was introduced.  Paul was given a specific call to bring God’s name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.  This is how NT Wright has described Paul’s role in the story of God:

“If the death and resurrection of Jesus is the hinge on which the great door of history swung open at last, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus was the moment when all the ancient promises of God gathered themselves up, rolled themselves into a ball, and came hurtling through that open door and into the wide world beyond.”  We’ll see this played out in the rest of the book of Acts.

Having said this, it’s important to note that life on the Way as followers of the Way is not about comparing ourselves to one another.  When it comes to our call, service to God is not about status but about being faithful in the ways that God calls us to serve.  When it comes to how we come to be following Jesus, it’s not about comparing ourselves to one another in the kingdom of God.  There was a time in my life when I felt badly that I didn’t have such a dramatic conversion story, and I am sure some of you gathered here today have had an experience similar to mine.  Raised in a Christian home. Raised in the church since your earliest memories. Growing up this way, you hear stories about conversions to Christianity that were truly 180-degree turns.  People who put the “turn” in “turn away from” into metanoia (into repentance). If you’re at all like me, you might have felt a little bit less than, a little bit cheated out of a good conversion story. You might have heard songs like “I Saw the Light” and longed for such a dramatic thing to have been part of your story.  If you’re also like me, you might have wandered off the path a little bit and then had your own mini-Road-to-Damascus moment when you came back. Of course, a life of unstinting devotion and unwavering faithfulness to God from as far back as one can remember is not something to be rued at all – it’s something to give thanks to God for.

In the story of Acts, chapter 9 marks a continued widening of the good news of Jesus being made known.  The good news has gone out from Jerusalem as a result of the persecution the church faced there.  It has gone to Samaria. Before Advent, we heard the story of Philip and the eunuch.   Now we have the re-entry into the story of the young man at whose feet the crowd who killed Stephen laid their coats. The man whom Luke tells us approved of their killing Stephen.  The man who was still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, and who decided that it would be a good idea to take the persecution show on the road, as it were, to look for followers of the Way, and bring them back bound to Jerusalem. Men and women. Followers of the Way. Saul is on the way to Damascus.

“Now as we was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.  He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, who do you persecute me?’”  (9:3-4)

This is Saul’s story, but there are truths here that are of great significance to each and every one of us; no matter what our story is, whether or not we are a follower of Christ, no matter what our faith story is.  The first is that no one is beyond the grace of God. The grace of God comes indeed to meet us. The grace of God met Saul while he was God’s enemy.  He’ll pick this up in his writing, of course. “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”  (Eph 2:13)  You who were far off have been brought near. “For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.” (Rom 5:10)  What does this have to say in terms of what we think of people who we are told are our enemies?  Look at how God treats enemies. What does this have to say to us in terms of the qualifications that we may feel we need to come before God?  I have a friend who tells me that he doesn’t feel that he’s worthy enough to come to church.  This is how people may feel, maybe because we’re not getting this message out in an effective way (of course, it might only be an excuse). The only qualification we need to come before God is a recognition of our need for God.  Here was a man who was at least complicit in murder.  This is where his zeal for his faith had led him.  There is an Irish saying my father used to use, and it meant it wasn’t such a big deal if someone dropped something or I broke something as I went tearing through the house, or what have you.  He used to say, “It’s not the killing of man.”  In Paul’s case, it was the killing of a man.  Men.  Women.  There is nothing in our past that God cannot turn for good.  Broken relationships.  Addiction.  Health issues.  Criminality.  An overly zealous religious upbringing that left us missing something fundamental about the love of God.  No faith upbringing at all.  There is nothing in our past that keeps us from the grace of God when we are confronted with the grace of God.

And this is the second thing. To be met by Christ is to be met by someone outside of ourselves. Saul’s encounter with Christ did not come about because of Saul’s own doing. We must always be aware of the role that God plays in our coming to faith.  We have not come to Christ solely because of our intellectual capacity or piety.  We don’t shun intellect or piety by any means -  they may well be factors in our coming to Christ, and hopefully are factors in our ongoing understanding of Christ. The point is, let’s not get self-righteous or too self-congratulatory about what got us here.  What we see here in the story of Saul of Tarsus is a man who is confronted by the initiative of God – the risen Christ – the one in whom all the promises of God are “Yes” and when we are confronted by the truth of the risen Christ the good and fitting and proper response is to give our “Yes” to God’s “Yes” to us.

Yes?

While we are met with something beyond ourselves, there is an intensely personal aspect to conversion. Note that the people surrounding Saul can tell there is something going on, but they’re not sure what.  This encounter is acutely personal. The call is acutely personal. God calls out his name – “Saul, Saul…”  How can we hear this and not hear the echo that sounds through the ages and think of the names of those whom God has called and hear “Moses! Moses!” and “Jacob, Jacob” and “Samuel! Samuel!” and… Hearing God’s call on our lives and coming to an ever increasing realization that we are Christ’s handiwork created in Jesus Christ for good works which God has prepared in advance for us to do (Eph 2:10).  No matter how unlikely or unexpected that might seem. God preparing much more than we might have perhaps expected perhaps. God using the most unexpected people in the most unexpected ways.

Thirdly, the importance of coming to an ever-growing realization of our need for God and our need to know God.  For Saul, it would have been quite easy to rest on his laurels. Religious credentials impeccable.  A Pharisee.  Son of a Pharisee.  Trained under Gamaliel. Roman citizenship and all the rights thereof, which were afforded him.  From Tarsus.  No backwater town.  A city that was right up there with the cities of its day – Athens,  Alexandria.  At the end of the scene, Paul is helpless.  He had intended to lead followers of the Way to Jerusalem – bound, helpless.  Paul is ironically led to Damascus.  Led by the hand.  His eyes open, but he is unable to see.  This was surely the beginning of Saul’s realization that he would write about so eloquently to the people of Philippi.  Saul’s recognition of his need for God. How often does it come about that we need to be at the limit of our own resources to know what it means to depend on God?  To realize our need to be led. Paul had confidence in things of the world to spare. Those religious credentials we spoke about earlier. That background. That upbringing. “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” (Phil 3:8)   “Who are you, Lord?” Is what Saul asked, and that became the goal of Paul’s life.  To know Christ and Christ’s love.  He prayed for his friends that they might grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.  As William Willimon put it, one never becomes so wise or adept at faith that conversion stops or one is immune from divine surprises. Conversion keeps on happening, the turning continues within the community.”

Which brings us to our final truth today.  We are We can’t leave this story without talking about  Ananias; without talking about what Saul was called into. Saul was called into the community. It would not have been an easy proposition for him to suddenly insert himself into a community of Christ followers whom he had so recently been bent on destroying. Ananias gets the call. Ananias says, “Here I am, Lord.” The good answer.  Ananias notes the unlikeliness of the situation to God. “I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem….”  But the Lord said to him, “Go…”  Just go.

As happens so often in Luke and Acts, two people who have had visions get together and their understanding of God is strengthened because of it. Ananias goes and enters the house on Straight Street and lays his hands on Saul and looks at what he says. 

“Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.  And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored.  Then he got up and was baptized (as Jesus calls us to do), and after taking some food, he regained his strength.”

Same old, same old, never again.  Welcome to the family. Even such a one as this.  Even such a one as I. Same old same old, never again.  Welcome to the family because we’re called to do this together. Welcome to the table because we’re called to share life together on this Way.  Pray this prayer with me as we start the year – “We belong to you, Lord.  Help us to see in the light of Jesus.”

Amen

God’s mercy has fallen on the world.  God’s goodness has fallen on the world.  The decorations are still up.  The candles of hope and peace and joy and love are still lit.  Hope and peace and joy and loye have come to us a gift and the gift is “God-with-us.”  The goodness of God is made known to us.  The steadfast love of God, of which Isaiah sings (because Isaiah 63 reads like a Psalm, though I’m not going to sing it this week:

I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that the Lord has done for us (hope/peace/joy/and love are not something we need to conjure up – they are before us to accept as gifts.  God has stepped into our mess.  Being saved, being delivered from my fears/my missing the mark/messing up/my despair/my search for meaning/my self-centredness/my self-absorption/my own worst inclinations/my apathy (speaking personally) or messes like state-sponsored violence/insularity/exclusion/oppression (speaking more globally) does not foundationally and fundamentally depend on us. Thank God for this because we could never do it.  If we coul,d we would have done it already.

Thank God a King has been born.   We’re moving on from the story of Jesus’ birth, and we’re continuing to ask the question “What does this mean?”  There is a certain type of rebellion in calling Jesus “Lord.”   To call Jesus Lord is to stand in opposition to the so-called powers that be that would claim lordship, or would claim to offer peace and stability and safety.  Leaders that are known for resentment and even rage; leaders that commit state-sponsored acts of violence; leaders whose number one priority is holding onto power are well known to us.  They are nothing new.

Which brings us to Herod.  A Roman-backed client-king.  Known as Herod the Great, which of course brings the question to mind, “What does it mean to be great?”  Known as Herod the Great because of the economic success he brought to the region, because economic success is great, right?  Known as great for the construction projects which he oversaw, because large infrastructure is a sign of greatness, right? 

When we talk about greatness, we must ask the question “Greatness for whom?”  Certainly not for the children aged two and under in and around Bethlehem.  Certainly not for their families.  Their mothers and fathers.  This is not an easy story, and there are many stories that are not easy at all.  Stories that are happening today all over our world.  Someone has said, “even when Jesus was born, there were outsiders bearing gifts, politicians trying to hold onto power, and people in Bethlehem screaming ‘Where is God?’  Rachel mourning for her children.  Mary probably grieved over the news down in Egypt, living off the gold provided by the magi.  After all, the Bethlehem women were a part of their little community – friends who shared resources, stories, and daily chores.  They did life together.  Their children played together.  Such news may have even compelled Mary to ask the same question in the face of such human suffering, ‘God, where are you?’”

Sometimes there are no easy answers to our questions.  Why didn’t God stop it?  Why didn’t all the parents in Bethlehem have the same dream so they could be warned too?  There’s no easy answer to the question of “Why does humanity do such things to one another?” In the middle of the questions, though, we know this good news. God has intervened.  This is what God does.  This is what God has always done in the face of suffering.  Many years prior to our Christmas story, another ruler ordered that all male Israelite babies be put to death.  They were a threat to the Egyptian Empire, you see.  The enemy within.  They were changing the makeup of the nation.  This is nothing new.  What happened?  God heard the cries of his people and he stepped in.  Moses, a baby who was saved from state-sponsored violence, would be called by God to lead God’s people out of oppression and slavery.  The prototypical saving event. God has intervened, and he appears in the form of a vulnerable baby.  This is how the kingdom of God, which has drawn near in Jesus, works, you see.  God’s love is not coercive.  God does not force hope, peace, joy and love on people.  For the last time in a while, let’s revisit what those truths mean in the kingdom of God.  Hope as confident expectation of good.  Peace as not simply absence of conflict (or cease-fires) but flourishing for all.  Joy is not as a mood or feeling that depends on circumstance, but the confidence that in Christ we travel along the freedom highway.  Love that over everything seeks the good for one another.  All of these are rooted and grounded in this baby who will grow up and proclaim the good news and be the good news and heal and make whole and will be killed and will be raised to life and who has promised that he will one day return to renew and restore all things.

This is God’s plan, and it is not going to be derailed by any human ruler or empire, no matter how things may look.  Kingdoms rise, and kingdoms fall, except for one.  Welcome to my kingdom, Jesus will say, where those who know their need for him are in a good place; where those who know God’s mercy will show it, where those who mourn will know comfort, where those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (for right relationship with God and with people, for justice) will be filled; where those who make peace – who seek flourishing for all – will be called children of God. To follow Jesus, to call Jesus “My Lord and my God,” is to have something to do in the kingdom of God.  I want us to consider Joseph in our story.  In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph shows himself to be a shining example of faithfulness to God’s plan, of following God’s leading in his life.  It might be revealed in a dream.  It might be revealed in hearing God’s word. It might be revealed in a song or in the life of someone close to us.  Joseph hears God’s instructions to protect this child and his mother.  Involuntary displacement is one of the defining issues of the 21^st century, and we are reminded in our story that God is not absent from the sufferings of the migrant and the refugee – those who are displaced, the vulnerable among us.  Neither should we be.  Joseph used the resources that had been available to his family to protect them.  Later on in Matthew, Jesus will tell a parable in which he will say that when you welcome a stranger, you welcome him.  

In what ways are we being called to protect the vulnerable?  I know we can be exposed to a lot of news, most of it bad, and how overwhelming the problems of the world can seem.  Perhaps we start with those who are known to us and known to our circles of love and care.  Perhaps we consider what we may do individually to extend care and protection; what we may do as a church; what we may do as a society.  The whole time, we ask God to give us hearts to love as God loves, and hands and feet to work his goodwill for all.  To make that news known in our words and our deeds, that God’s mercy has fallen on the world.  To say “Help us be people of your mercy.”

We continue to live as people of hope – the confident expectation of good.  The confident expectation that God’s plan will not be thwarted.  We have been talking through these weeks of Advent of Toda la tierra espera.  There is a day that all the earth awaits, and we wait for it actively.  The day is God’s kingdom come in all its fullness, the end of mourning and crying and pain.  The renewal of all things and God with us in a whole new way.  We continue to bear the lights of hope, peace, joy and love – the light of Christ as we go through our days, as we long for redemption and restoration.  There is a passage from Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men” which speaks to this light.  I want to share it to close:  

“Sheriff Tom Bell is the main character in the novel.  He sees evil with an honesty born of his own failures to bring justice, and he wavers in the sight of all that is frozen and impossibly broken. What he has experienced is so much bigger than himself. As the novel comes to an end, after dark and chilling and unredeemed violence, Bell reflects on why he first went into law enforcement and says, “It was because… I always thought I could at least somehow put things right, and I guess I just don’t feel that way anymore. I’m being asked to stand for somethin that I don’t have the same belief in it I once did.” Sheriff Bell reflects to himself about the only hope he can imagine, a hungering for redemption that transcends the powers of humanity. “I wake up sometimes way in the night, and I know as certain as death that there ain’t nothing short of the second comin of Christ that can slow this train.” Then Bell remembers a dream he had about his father.… “I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold, and there was snow on the ground, and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him, and he had his head down, and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do, and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.” Dreams delivered the Holy Family, and a dream delivered Sheriff Bell into hope.”

May we know that Jesus goes with us and that Jesus goes ahead of us.  May we carry the light of hope and peace as we go along together. May God help us to continue to see and be the light of Christ.  May this be true for all of us.  Amen         

What has God done, what is God doing, and what will God do to make this time of year special?  While we consider this question let us hear the prayer of the Psalmist and the repeated chorus f the song that is before us in Psalm 80 – “Restore us, O God, O God of hosts, O Lord God of hosts, let your face shine, that we may be saved!”  God’s love comes to us as a gift, and we’ve been given a song to sing in response to it.  Restore us, O God, let your face shine, that we may be saved.  That we may be forgiven/delivered/made whole/enabled to live in the way you created us to live – in love of You and love of one another and love of your whole creation.

So we light the fourth candle of Advent.  How fitting that we light the lights during these shortest days of the year.  How fitting that we light the candle of love on the day of the year which brings the most darkness.  What is it about God that makes this time of year special?  We remember John’s words, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  We know about the darkness in our world – that hatred, the violence, the vitriol, the enmity.  We know the mixed feelings and moods that this time of year can bring – oftentimes in the same person.  Feelings ranging from excitement and looking forward to events to pressure to fulfill expectations and obligations to sadness that Christmas is not what it once was.

We have heard this Advent of how hope in the kingdom of heaven is not simply wishing for a certain outcome, but the confident expectation of good.  We have heard how peace is not simply the absence of active conflict but flourishing and goodness for all - mutually assured flourishing.  We heard last week of how joy in the kingdom of heaven is not dependent on circumstances, but is rather the confidence that we of travelling along together on the freedom highway, the deliverance highway.   As we rest in God’s love for us this day, let us hear the good news, no matter our personal circumstances or

In God’s vast, indescribable, immeasurable, unfathomable love, God has not abandoned us.  God refuses to abandon us.  “They shall name him Emmanuel,” Matthew quotes from the prophet Isaiah.  It’s not a direct quote because Isaiah speaks of the young woman naming the child.   “They shall name him Emmanuel,” says Matthew, and he’s talking about all of those who will name this baby, whose birth we celebrate, “Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.”  God has broken into human history in a whole new way.  God has already made Christmas special, and the good and fitting and proper response is to be one of those who call him “God is with us.”  To be one of those people who pray, “Restore us, O Lord God of hosts, let your face shine, that we may be saved.”  To step into the specialness of Christmas this Advent 2025, let my prayer be “Restore me, O God, let your face shine, that I may be saved.”

Because we need saving, right?  Whether we’re considering global/national/local events or the circumstances of our lives, we need saving.  We need restoration.  In Isaiah 7, it was an existential threat to the kingdom of Judah.  The old Israelite kingdom of David had been divided in two – Israel (or Ephraim) and Judah.  Ahaz was king of Judah which was threatened by invasion from a coalition between Israel and Syria.  The Syro-Ephraimite coalition wanted Judah to join them in the fight against the Assyrians, and would use military force to make that happen.  King Ahaz looked to the Assyrian empire for help.

There’s a call here, and the call is to trust in God.  “If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all” is what we read right before our passage.  The call is to unswerving trust in God.  The question “Who or what will save us?” is particularly meaningful when things have not gone the way we thought they would or should, when things are spinning out of control (or at least beyond our own ability to control), when the myth of our self-sufficiency (whether on a global or personal scale) is clearly shown to be a myth.    

King Ahaz of Judah was facing forces beyond his control.  Literally - military forces from Israel and Syria, which threatened Judah.  “Trust God” is the message from the prophet. In fact, “Ask the Lord for a sign,” Isaiah tells him.  “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test,” replies Ahaz.  The king is clothing his refusal in most pious language.   The clothing is just to cover the fact that his refusal to ask God for a sign has more to do with his refusal to trust God at all.  Ahaz has a plan, and it’s his own.  He will make an alliance with the Assyrian Empire rather than trust in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  This will end badly for Judah.  For now, though, Isaiah tells the king, “Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also?  Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign.  Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.”

The sign is God with us.  The sign is a child.  Deliverance from the forces that threaten is at hand.  “He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.” Curds and honey signify blessing.  It means goodness by the time this child is old enough to know right from wrong. “Before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be destroyed.”  Before this child comes of age, the threat which you dread so much will be taken away.  Goodness. Blessings. Deliverance. Freedom from fear.  The promise of God with us.

Which brings us to our nativity scene.  A story is told of a little girl who came home one day from school, excited to tell her parents about her part in the school’s Christmas Play.  The only problem was that she couldn’t remember what part she had been given.  She only remembered that it started with “B.”  Her family spent some time trying to figure out who “B” might be, but couldn’t come up with anything.  On the night of the play, it was revealed that their daughter played one of the bystanders.

When we look at the Christmas story as it is told by Luke, it is very easy to see Joseph in a kind of bystander light.  He’s mentioned only in association with going to Bethlehem because he is descended from the family of David; at being amazed by Simeon’s words in the Temple; at being mentioned by Mary as she’s telling Jesus how worried she and his father have been when he went AWOL during their visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was 12.     

Oftentimes, the people whose stories we come to know in the Bible are not shining examples of faith or doing the right thing.  Oftentimes, they are a reminder of our need for God’s grace and how God transforms us.  Mary and Joseph are a couple of young people who are doing the right thing when it comes to God.  Mary and Joseph are shining examples of trust, commitment, and devotion.  Mary’s “Let it be with me according to your word” to the angel in Luke) and pondering truths in her heart.  Joseph’s wanting to temper what the law required with mercy and stepping out in faith.

Joseph is not at all a bystander in Matthew’s story.  In a most personal way, things have not gone the way he expected them to.  In the middle of such situations, we have choices to make.  Joseph wanted to do the right thing.  Engagement would typically last one year and was as legally binding as marriage to us.  Mary is found to be with child.  The law required that the whole thing be called off, but Joseph did not wish to expose Mary to public disgrace.  He wanted to call off the whole thing quietly. 

Joseph receives a sign – an indication of God at work.  An indication of God’s promise being fulfilled.   Do you believe God speaks to us in dreams?  I do, absolutely.

But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife (do not be afraid to trust God), for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’  All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us.’”

Trust in God is not always easy, and it could be costly (at least in terms of things we may value – though we may come to find they were of little value in the first place).  We don’t know what Joseph and Mary faced in terms of reaction to this scandal in Nazareth or Bethlehem.  Someone has said, “Our choices are not always easy to make or to keep. The consequences are sometimes painful, but there are always choices. We need not be bystanders to our own lives. We can, like Joseph, make the hard choice to believe that God is at work, that God is present, even in the most troubling of situations. We can choose to be obedient to the call to commit ourselves to follow, to commit ourselves to honour… even when it becomes difficult to do so.”

But what else would we do?  Here's the wonder of the sign of Emmanuel, of God with us.  God refuses to abandon us.  What else could we do but to trust and commit ourselves to follow? What else could we do but put ourselves into this Nativity story, which has been ongoing for over 2,000 years?

There are two things I pray we do as we close.   The first is this - Let us name Jesus this Advent season.  There are two names given to the child born in our Matthew 1 passage.  The first is Jesus.  Yeshua.  “God saves.”  Deliverer.    The second is Emmanuel – “God is with us.”  Look at the last thing that Joseph does as a sign to us – “… and he named him Jesus.”  To name this child meant that Joseph was claiming him as his own.  I am his.  He is mine.  May we ask God to give us eyes to see the signs of God’s promises all around us.  May we ask God to give us eyes to see the signs of God’s wondrous love all around.  Signs that God refuses to abandon us.  Such signs are all around us. 

Example

Example

Example

Signs of the Word made flesh – the incarnation of the love of God.  The birth of  “God saves.”  The birth of “God is with us.”

Secondly, pray that God would make us signs of God’s wondrous love.  The angel’s message to the shepherds was, “This will be a sign for you…”  May our prayer be, “Let us be a sign to all.”  May God call things into being in and through us – things like the hope that is to be found in Jesus, the vision of peace described by Isaiah, the joy that is known in Christ, no matter our circumstances, the wondrous love of “God with us,” – the wondrous truth that God refuses to abandon us.

May God help us see such signs and be such signs.  May this be true for each and every one of us.  Merry Christmas, dear family.

Amen

Hope is not simply optimism or wishful thinking or longing for a good outcome.  Hope is the confident expectation of good.  Peace is not simply the absence of conflict but mutual assured flourishing.  In Jesus, who has drawn near.  In “God with us.”  Someone has said this about joy: “Joy is not the happiness we feel that grows out of contentment in circumstances. Joy is the confidence, borne out of experience, that we are on the Lord’s highway - and not even we fools can get lost. Joy is that taste of someday that we can have if we pay attention.”

So let us pay attention, sisters and brothers.  Joy is not simply a feeling.  Neither is joy grinning and bearing it, or feigned happiness.  Joy is a gift.  Joy is like water in the desert.  Joy looks like something, and we are called to look, and we are called to take part, regardless of circumstances.  Joy is rooted and grounded in this truth that we are invited to see today and every day.  “Here is your God.”  Here he is.  He’s come near.  He’s drawn near!

We have our nativity scene set up at the front of the church, as we do every year.  Every year, we do not place baby Jesus in the nativity scene until December 24^th.  For the rest of the year, the baby Jesus figurine is in my middle desk drawer.

Now I have to tell you something about my middle desk drawer.  It’s a bit of… I don’t know if I would call it a junk drawer exactly, but it’s where miscellaneous things end up, let’s just say.  The middle drawer tends to contain what I would best call detritus of life.  Half-dead batteries.  A Tide Pen.  Pieces of Blythwood history that people have given me with which I just cannot bear to part.  A microphone.  The nozzle for the air pump that I use to inflate basketballs/volleyballs.  You get the idea.

I leave the baby Jesus figurine in there, and I’ve attached a post-it with these words from Isaiah 35 - “Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God.”  In the middle of my detritus.  In the middle of my wilderness.  The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad.

Two truths about followers of Christ are evident in our readings today.  One is that we have been given a song.  Last week, we talked about praising God in song at every opportunity.  The song might be called “God Is For You” or “God Is With You” to personalize it.  We might use the words from Isaiah for our song title – “Here Is Your God.”  That’s our song.  If you’re saying, “Well, I’m really not that much of a singer,” don’t worry about it.  Shout it.  The word translated “singing” in Isaiah 35 can be translated as “shout.”  The desert shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with singing.  Our God is here!  We’re on the deliverance highway, and the ransomed/delivered/forgiven of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing!  Do you have joy this day?

Here's some good news.  Our song, like our joy, is not something we need to call up from within ourselves.  It is given to us.  All we need to do is accept this gift of a child named “God with us.”  We don’t need to call joy up from within ourselve,s and this is a good thing.  Exile is hard.  The wilderness is hard.  “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land,” said the people of God as they hung up their harps on tree branches by the rivers of a city, a city whose people had carried them away in captivity.  How can we sing?

How can we sing (or shout) this Sunday?  In Latin-influenced church traditions, this is called Gaudete Sunday.  The Sunday of joy.  The Sunday of rejoicing.  The candle is pink today because it was thought that the usual penitent purple (and the sorrow and regret we feel for doing wrong) just didn’t fit on Joy Sunday.  How can we speak of joy given the state of the world/state of our lives/state of the lives of those who are most dear to us?  Might it seem out of place, even with a pink candle?  Might it seem gaudy even – extravagantly bright or showy, given the state of things?  Gaudete Sunday – and it’s interesting that gaudy comes from that same Latin word, gaudere, from which we get Gaudete. It means rejoice.

So let us sing with the Psalmist – “I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.”  Can’t stop, won’t stop.  “Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.”  We see how all these Advent candles are working together and making their truth known together.

So this is the first thing.  We’ve been given a song.  We’ve personalized this “God for/God with you” or “Here is your God,” but we don’t stop there.  Here is the second thing that I’d like us to hold up as truth for ourselves this Joy Sunday.

We’re travelling along a highway together.  You know, one of my favourite images for the church is that of a pilgrim people, a people on a journey together toward the holy city on the holy mountain.  We are called to go together, and we are called to invite others to join us as we go.  Someone has put it like this:  “We are travelling the Lord’s Highway today. We may not yet be all that we can be; we may not yet have reached our destination as the people of God, but we are on the way. We are a pilgrim people, singing our songs of ascent as we go up into the glorious presence of God, even as we are already embraced by our God every step of the way.”

We are realists, and we realize that it can be hard to travel through the wilderness.  Arid, desert land is tough.  This is the kind of land of which Isaiah speaks.  The wilderness around the Dead Sea in southern Israel is rough.  There’s not enough water for crops or trees.  Winter rains bring growth every year, but it’s pretty scraggly growth.  This is the promise made in Isaiah 35, where the wilderness and the desert are rejoicing along with us.  “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus, it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon (and its cedar trees) shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon (the coastal plain where crops grow in abundance.  They shall see the glory of the Lord (the weight of God’s presence), the majesty of our God.”

The promise is that one day the whole desert will be turned into flourishing.  The promise is for one day when Jesus will come, but we see evidence of it now, the same way a desert traveller sees an oasis or sees flowers after winter rains.  The same way that beaver complexes remain after the desolation of a wildfire… (!)

I used to say that this kind of desert imagery is hard for us to imagine in this part of the world, where wilderness is lush forests and lakes and so on.  Until I heard about beaver dams and wildfires. One may wonder why the beaver is such a symbol of Canada and seen in places like Toronto Police Service badges and the Toronto coat of arms.  Apart from the animals’ role in Canada’s origin story, the beaver is noble and industrious.  Persevering.  Not only this, but I found out that recent studies have shown that beaver dams (or beaver complexes, as they’re called when they’re grouped together) provide a firebreak against wildfires.  Here’s a photo of devasted wilderness except for where the beavers have been at work.  Not only do these dams provide shelter for wildlife, they act as a springboard for new growth after devastation. 

The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus (like the beaver complex after a wildfire), it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing.  Joy is something we can see, and we need to continue to encourage one another to look. 

As we go along, our call is to strengthen the hands that are weak and make firm the knees that are feeble.  Not our own, of course; we’re not up to that on our own (and I’m starting to learn something about feeble knees, let me say).  Let us strengthen one another’s hands and knees.  Why do we come together week by week if not at least in part, to encourage one another?  To remind one another.  To say to one another whose hearts are fearful, “Be strong, do not fear!”  Why?  Here is your God.  He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense.  He will come and save you.  If this talk of vengeance sounds harsh to us, remember that it is God’s work and it involves setting right all injustice, relief of suffering and the liberation of all from fear and impoverishment. This is what God does.  When we worship together - when we are reminded of God’s truth together, remind one another of God’s truth together and encourage one another in God’s truth together – we are made more like Him, and we are enabled to go out and do as God would have us do, reflecting God’s ways.

May we be attentive to what God is doing.  Look at what Jesus told John the Baptist when John asked the question, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  John was a serious man who took repentance (turning) and living in the kingdom of heaven seriously.  “Bear fruit worthy of repentance” was his call, and may we keep on hearing it.  John had staked his life on the whole kingdom thing and Jesus as the coming one thing.   “Are you really the one?” is the question he sends from prison.  A wilderness situation if ever there was one.  Jesus can handle our questions.  The life of faith is one that is, at times, paired with doubt.  Doubt is not so much the thing to be avoided as fear is.  It’s been said that the opposite of faith is not doubt but fear.  This is why we repeatedly hear “Fear not” or “Be strong, do not fear.”  Jesus’ answer to John’s question is not “Of course I am” or “How dare you ask such a question?”  Jesus’ answer is “Go tell John what you hear and see; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.  And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me (and we hear the echo of the Psalm – Happy are those whose help is in the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.” 

You may be saying at this point, “David, it’s great to hear that God is with us and not to fear, but what is joy supposed to look like?  What are we looking for?”

To which I say look to the promise.  The promise is in all of our readings today.  The promise will be made known fully one day, but we know it in part now.  “The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.  The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.” (Ps. 146: 7b-8a  “The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow.” (Ps. 146-9a)  The promise is heard in Isaiah 35 – “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”

Follower of Christ, fear not.  This faith is not just something we speculate about or look to in order to hold a theory about life and death and everything in between.  This faith looks like something.  From what have you been freed?  How are you being enabled to see in a whole new way?  How have you been lifted up when bowed down under a crushing weight?  How are you coming to hear in a whole new way?  How have you been enabled to leap and given a new song to sing?

Even when doubts arise.  Even when things have not gone the way we wanted to or expected them to.  Promises appear before us like lush growth around a beaver dam surrounded by devastation, so that we can not only talk about joy this day but sing and shout it and live it out.  “Tell John what’s going on,” said Jesus.  May we never let questions or concerns about what’s going to happen or how it will happen blind us to what God is doing among us.  “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” 

Promises that will know completion one day; promises that we know in part now, no matter what is going on.  God is with us no matter what our circumstances.  Joy even in the middle of sorrow.  Christmas is not unmitigated joy for all.  Blue Christmas is real.  Joy is God with us in the middle of loss, in the midst of uncertainty, where we see good news being proclaimed and held onto. 

I think I’ll leave baby Jesus in my desk this year as a reminder of the joy to be found in “God with us.”  Someone has described “God with us” like this -   “See, he’s here! He’s been here all along. Right alongside, through the joys and the heartaches, through the struggles and the accomplishments.” Right there, maybe out of sight for a time, but close by. Within reach. Even in the desert. Even in a place of exile. Of uncertainty. Right there, all the time. Emmanuel.

God with us.  Our hope.  Our peace.  Our joy.  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift.

Amen   

Isn’t that a welcome thing to hear?  I came to a greater understanding of language and found out what the imperative tense is.  The command.  The invitation.  Hark.  Listen.  Imperative is a good word for because it’s kind of imperative, isn’t it?  To listen today?  I am a person in need of peace.  We are a people in need of peace.  We want peace in our homes.  We are a society in need of peace.  Peace in our coming and going.  Peace in our public spaces.  We are a world in need of peace.  I don’t need to explain why.

It seems that each year when we come to the Peace Sunday of Advent I come back to the lines from “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.”  The hymn was written by American Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1864.  The Civil War was raging, cannons drowning out the sound of church bells, when Longfellow wrote:

“And in despair, I bowed my head. 'There is no peace on Earth, ' I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on Earth, goodwill to men.”

What do we have to say about peace on this Sunday?  Perhaps it’s not so much about what we say.  Perhaps it’s more about listening and asking the question, “What story are we going to live out?”  How do we not despair in the seeming absence of peace, whether it’s geo-political wars and rumours of wars and invasion and incursion interdiction (and all the sanitized language we use around them like “kinetic strikes”) to peace in our homes, with which many of us struggle?  Peace among those closest to us. We don’t despair.  The four Advent candles go together, and the Christ candle is in the middle of them.  We don’t despair, O follower of Jesus.  We marked Hope in a special way last week.  Listen to the words of Paul to the followers of Jesus in Rome so many years ago.  “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.” (Romans 15:4)  So let us listen, and let us ask the question, “What story are we going to live out?”

“In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea.”  Once upon a time, a man named John appeared in the desert.  We need people like John.  Prophets.  Let us listen to them.  We need to be jarred awake out of our everyday.  I need to be jarred awake.  Look at John with his camel hair clothes and his diet that would hardly make him welcome at many Christmas dinner tables.  Talk about dietary restrictions!  Let us welcome him and hear him; he brings his own imperative.  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near (or is at hand).”   The Prince of Peace has come, comes to us, and will come. 

John did not go to the seats of power.  Imperial palaces.  Capitals of nations.  This is what leaders do when they seek peace, right?  Go to the centres of power.  Or those at the centre of power meet in neutral locations.  This is the way the world works.  This is how we broker peace.  John appearing in the wilderness signals another truth.  The world’s power brokers are not going to bring us peace.  The concept of peace in the kingdom of heaven is something much broader and deeper than an absence of conflict, or a non-aggression pact, or even mutual self-interest.  We know this, right?  I was born in the middle of the Cold War, where Mutual Assured Destruction was the thing that would prevent humanity from destroying itself (MAD indeed).  At the end of the Cold War in the 1990’s there was much optimism and talk of the “Peace Divided.”  Where has this left us?  We’re not despairing, we’re still listening. John is in the desert, and the desert is the place where God is made known.  God’s provision.  God’s protection.  God’s promise.  “The kingdom of heaven has drawn near,” John proclaim,s and we do well to listen.  You want to talk to him about the Pax Romana?  No, no, no.  The kingdom of heaven truth of peace is not just absence of conflict but shalom – well-being for all, security for all, flourishing for all.  MAF – mutual assured flourishing. 

The one to bring peace has drawn near.  So what?  Here comes another imperative.  “Repent!”  Turn to him.  Orient myself toward the one who said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.”  (John 14:27)  I want that.  That is the story that I want to live in, and I want to live out that story every day, and I’m not there yet, so let me keep on listening to brother John’s imperative.  Repent.  Turn. Every day.  I want to be moving in your direction, Lord, every day.  Turning is not a one-time thing.  Someone has said this about repentance “Repentance is not a one-time experience associated with conversion, but ongoing reformation of individuals and communities into the body of Christ, formed around the cross”  To which I would only add “formed around our baptisms, around our gathering at our Lord’s table, around God’s word, around our praise, around acts of mercy and compassion and grace and forgiveness.

This is what our God is like.  Listen is the command today.  Hark!  Listen to the voice of the prophet Isaiah.  Isaiah witnessed the power of empire.  He witnessed rulers turning away from God and God’s ways.  He saw invasion and a righteous remnant being sustained.  He saw restoration.  He saw the collapse of the empire because here’s the thing about empires – they don’t last.  Don’t let their arrogance fool us.  We are surrounded by this kind of arrogance all the time, and it has always been this way.  Listen to these lines from Isaiah 10 and the pride of the Assyrian king:

When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the arrogant boasting of the king of Assyria and his haughty pride.  For he says, “By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I have understanding; I have removed the boundaries of people (borders mean nothing to us)and have plundered their treasures (because hasn’t it always been about the strong plundering the weak?  That’s how it goes right?) like a bull I have brought down those who sat on thrones (we’re the greatest empire in the history of the world).  My hand has found, like a nest, the wealth of the peoples, and as one gathers eggs that have been forsaken, so I have gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved a wing, or opened its mouth, or chirped.” (Is 10:12-14)  Our empire shall last 1,000 years, they say. Or maybe even our empire will last forever.

You know what lasts forever?  We are talking in these weeks about walking in the light of Jesus, seeing everything in the light of Jesus.  You know what lasts forever?  The word of our God will stand forever.  We’re not going to be come up with well-being for all/mutual assured flourishing on our own, but…  The word of our God came to Isaiah, and the word was this.  Listen!

Read Isaiah 11:1-5

(and we remember another song that goes “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne/Steadfast love and mercy go before you.” Ps 89:14)

Listen to the vision!  The wolf living with the lamb.  The word for live here is “sojourn,” as in stay in a place for a while, as in the lamb going “Come on in, wolf!”  The leopard lying down with the kid because this is not some temporary arrangement, this is generational peace.  The cow and the bear grazing, their young lying down together (like those unlikely animal friend reels we see on social media).  No hurt or destruction on all God’s holy mountain because the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord – not simply knowing about God but an understanding and living out of God’s ways based on a relationship with and fellowship with and sharing with God who himself will be with them and will wipe every tear from every eye and death will be no more and mourning and crying and pain will be no more. So we do not despair.  At Advent, we remember that Jesus has come and we remember that Jesus will come.  The next verse in “I Heard the Bells” goes like this – “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep/God is not dead nor doth He sleep/The wrong shall fail, the right prevail/With peace on earth goodwill to men.”

We look forward to the coming of the Prince of Peace.  We live in the meantime, and I know the meantime can be pretty mean, and we can be pretty mean.  We live expectantly, and we live prayerfully, and pray make me a channel of your peace, Lord.  We live listening and hearing that command/invitation to “Hark” and hear John the Baptist’s words, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”  What would it look like in our lives to be agents of peace (well-being for all/flourishing for all) in the power and enablement of the Holy Spirit of Christ – God with us?  Starting with those with whom we are closest.

I want to end with Paul’s words to the Romans and speak of two very practical ways to make peace.

1) “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another (let there be peace on earth and let it begin with us), in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Rom 15:5-6)   Let us take the opportunity this Advent to glorify God with our voices in praise.  Literally sing together as much as we can.  (If you’re not able physically to get out and sing this Advent let me know and we will come to you and sing together).

2)  “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”  There is a welcome in the kingdom of heaven.  Empires of the world say things like “You’re not welcome here unless you’re a net asset to us.”  Jesus says “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matt 11:28)  Jesus says “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.  As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”  (John 7:37-38)  We are welcomed to the table in the kingdom of heaven.  Who might we welcome in these weeks of Advent and beyond?  To whom might we extend an invitation and welcome?  In our homes?  In our church?  In the coffee place?  What invitations might be extended to us that we might accept in the same spirit of peace and hospitality and mutually assured flourishing? We’re living in the meantime as people of peace – people of the Prince of Peace.  Listen!  

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” 

The choices are endless, from chocolates and coffee to boozy beverages (and everything in between). “I love the wide variety of Advent calendars you can find today,” says Deputy Editor and holiday gifting expert Katie Bandurski. “Growing up, I only remember puny, chalky chocolate countdowns. Today, there is truly something for every interest, and the products are much more engaging. From tiny jam jars to whiskey shooters, December has never been so fun!”

Now I’m not trying to kill anyone’s joy, and I’m certainly not against giving or receiving presents.  I do wonder, though, “What’s it all about?”  As someone has said, “Advent is not just about Christmas… Advent is a reminder that we’re heading somewhere.  We have a destination as a people.  Advent lets us stop and ask, “Are we there yet?” Before “Are we there yet?” comes “Where is there?”  Where are we going?  We’re going together and we need to be going with one another.  We need the encouragement from one another.  We need to be reminded of what is true and right and good from one another.  We need to hear the invitation from one another.  Psalm 122 has a wonderful opening, and it’s a call to worship, and it goes like this – “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!”  Let us be reminded again of stories that speak of love, of peace, of joy, of hope.  I want that for all of us this Advent.  Let us be reminded together as we praise God in song.

The song that we hope to sing throughout these Advent weeks is the title of our Advent series.  “Toda la Tierra Espera” is Spanish for “All the earth is waiting.”  The song was written by a Catalonian priest (and I have an affinity for musical clergy!) named Alberto Taube.  We talked not long ago about learning from one another in Christ – learning from one another’s cultures and languages.  The thing about esperar in Spanish is that while it means “to wait”, it also means “to hope”.  Hope is built into waiting, as it were.  In Christ, we are a people who wait in hope.

So for what or whom do we wait?  Where is “there” in that “Are we there yet?” question?

We turn to the prophet Isaiah.  The prophet Isaiah saw a lot. He experienced a lot.  He consorted with kings.  He knew the pressures of family life, this son of Amoz/husband of the prophetess/father of Shearjashub (“A remnant shall return) and Mahershalalhashbaz.  He saw rulers who were more interested in bribes than justice.  He saw oppressive laws being written.  He saw the poor being robbed of their rights.  He saw the most marginalized (widows and orphans) being turned into prey.  He saw people depending on their wealth.  He saw geopolitical upheaval and invasion.  He saw nations depending on arms.  He saw destruction to come. He saw a people who remained and a people who turned to God.

He saw the word of God.  He saw restoration.  Advent is not simply a countdown.  Advent is not simply a looking back, though it is a looking back.  We look back at God acting in human history in the person of the one called Emmanuel – God with us.  We look forward to the fulfillment of the kingdom of God or the reign of God.  Isaiah describes it in terms of the mountain of the Lord’s house being established as the highest of mountains, not to lord it over others but as a beacon to which all nations are drawn.  It’s a vision of diversity.  All the nations streaming to the mountain of the Lord.  It’s a vision of people saying, “Let’s go and learn the ways of God so that we can walk in God’s way together!”  Out of Zion will go forth instruction and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.  Judgement and justice will be known.

Peace will be known.  Weapons of war turned into instruments of agriculture.  People being fed and provided for rather than being killed.  Swords into plowshares.  Tanks turned into combine harvesters.  Spears into pruning hooks.  Assault rifles turned into garden shears.   What a jarring juxtaposition.  How much of the world has seen the exact opposite in recent years?      It’s easy to be blinded when all we can see is what is in front of our eyes.  Isaiah invites us into a larger and longer vision.  It’s the kind of vision that we often hear in African-American spirituals. I’m gonna lay down my burden/Down by the riverside.  I’m gonna put on my long white robe/Down by the riverside.  I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield/Down by the riverside/Study war no more.  (You know that oftentimes the loudest and most meaningful calls for justice and peace come from the most oppressed.  “Neither shall they learn war any more.”  The means of war are abolished (swords and spears are remade), the act of war is no more (nation shall not lift up sword against nation), and even the intent of war is done away with (neither shall they learn war no more).  All in the judgement and justice of God.  It's where this whole story is going. 

We look back, and we look ahead at Advent.  Isaiah was looking ahead.  “In days to come” is how he puts it.  We know that after destruction and exile, a return of the people and an element of restoration would come to Jerusalem.  We know that in the coming of the Prince of Peace, deliverance/salvation/restoration would be made known in Jerusalem.  We know that the promise of the Holy Spirit would be made known in Jerusalem, and the ways of God would not only be taught but enabled within the people of God through the indwelling/inliving presence of the Spirit of Christ.  We remember the promise of the day Jesus called the renewal of all things, the promise of God making all things new – a new heaven and new earth and a loud voice from the throne saying “See, the home of God is among mortals, He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with then; he will wipe every tear from their eyes, Death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” 

We’ve talked about looking back, and we’ve talked about looking ahead.  We’re also called to look around us.  I said that we should not let present circumstances blind us to God’s vision.  At the same time, we are not called to be people who are blind to what is going on around us.  What does it look like for us to be called to be a people who wait well?

It looks like living in the light.  Isaiah’s vision is not just to remind us of what’s coming.  Isaiah’s vision is a call to faithful living, trusting in God’s promises and reflecting God’s ways.  “Walk in the light” we sing, and it is a wonderful image and so good and so apt and so reflected in the traditions of this season like our Advent Candles, and our Christmas Eve Candlelight Service and our lights which glow and cheer us during these shortest days of the year.  Are you ready for the invitation?  Here it is.  “O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

Let us walk in the light of the Lord together.  Let us hear Jesus’ words resonate and echo.  “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but have the light of life.”   “You are the light of the world.  A city built on a hill cannot be hid.”  Let us hear John’s words in his first letter – “Whoever says ‘I abide in him’ ought to walk just as he walked.”  “Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling.”  (1 John 2:6,10)

Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!  Let us be attentive.  What a great thing to pray.  On our Sunday afternoons, I often take the opportunity to go with Nicole’s mom to her Greek Orthodox church, St. Constantine and St. Helen on Trethewey.  This is one of the prayers they pray at communion.  Let us be attentive.  Let us be attentive to where God is at work around us in the most unlikely places, in the most unlikely ways, or in the most unlikely people.  Let us look for God’s promises of joy and peace and love breaking through into our present.  “Keep awake therefore,” says Jesus, “for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”  Don’t get lost in endless speculation.  Stay awake.  Eyes wide open.  Be ready, Jesus says, not in the sense of preparations we have to make (as in “Are you ready for Christmas??”), Jesus will return as people are working in the field and preparing food.  Let us be attentive in going about our lives in the light of Christ’s mercy and grace and compassion and justice and love.

The worship that we share together turns outward (because you knew that wasn’t all about us).  Someone has put it like this:

“What stories will we tell? What examples will we live out? How will we make our space ready to receive the one who comes and the family invited to share? We can choose songs about anticipation and hope, not just completion. We can pray prayers that lean into the not yet and the invitation. We can pledge ourselves to the task of preparing the way and shouting in the wilderness that God is near to the brokenhearted. We can light the lights that speak of our confidence and joy that God is among us and desires to be known.”

We gather in the Lord’s house not to take part in an empty annual ritual, but to be restored.  To have our hearts restored; to have our gladness restored; to have our mission restored.  “You know what time it is,” writes Paul in Romans 13:11.  Now is the time to wake from sleep.  Now is the time to walk in the light of the new day that is dawning, and sing in anticipation of the Son in the same way that birds sing in anticipation of the sun.  Let’s get ahead of the day.  If you’re like me, you know what it is to sleep in and let the day get away from you (I know sometimes we need the sleep).  This world – this age – rolls along, but a new age has broken in and is breaking in.  The night is far gone.  The day is near.  Let us live honourably as in the day.  Let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and all the hope, peace, joy and love he brings.

 I want that.  God grant that it may be so for each of us this Advent season.

Have you ever been in a situation or had an experience on which you look back and say, “My goodness, that came out of nowhere!”   Like it came out of nowhere.  You had no idea.  No expectation.  This is one of the things about following Christ, about following the leading and prompting of the Holy Spirit.  We get to take part in situations on which we may look back and say “Where did that come from?!”   Like a man going along a road at noon.  A road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. A wilderness road.  A desert road.  Who would have thought Phillip would be in such a situation?

Some years ago, here at Blythwood, I might have said the same thing.  Who would have thought I’d be sitting around a table with some friends from Blythwood and some friends, residents and staff from a local youth shelter on a Thursday night, eating pizza? We had just finished playing volleyball.  We did this every Thursday evening.  We finished eating, and no one was in a rush to get away (always a good sign).  We started to talk about school and careers and that kind of thing.  At this point, one of our young friends asked, “How do you find your path in life?”  Another question came back, “Do you mean like a career path?”  We were talking careers, jobs, and so on.  The young person replied, “No, like your spiritual path.”

We had been helping out at this shelter for a few years.  It was difficult to foster meaningful relationships, often because of the temporary nature of living in a shelter.  For many of these young people, adults were looked on with suspicion. Their experience of adults in their lives had not, by and large, been great.

So my goodness.  We were then in a conversation which involved a lot of talking, listening, and question asking.  The chance was had to speak in very broad strokes about God’s redemption plan and to speak in very personal fine lines about what being caught up in the redemption of God through Christ and in the Holy Spirit has meant for me and means for me and what I hope it will mean not only for me but for all of humanity and all of creation.  You don’t have to find your path. Jesus has made the path, and he’s on the path, and he’s the path, and the invitation is to join him.  

And I was so thankful.

Right place, right time.  My story did not end with a baptism, not that I know of anyway.  You never know, though.  We trust God’s promise that God’s word will not return to God empty or without accomplishing that for which God purposes it.  We trust that in Christ, each one of God’s promises is a “Yes.”

Yes? 

Those young people were living with a lot of unknowns; a lot of ambiguity.  It’s hard enough to be a teen or young 20-something in this day and age without throwing into the mix the fact that you don’t have a home.  You are in between things. On the way to a destination that may be unknown.  On the road.  When you’re on the road, you’re between destinations.  The road is also a place of unforeseen circumstances and boundary crossing. Jesus is also on the road, as we remember from the story of those two disciples travelling to Emmaus in Luke’s 1^st volume.  Jesus is King, and he’s King of the road too.  An angel of the Lord tells Phillip to hit the road.  We remember Phillip was one of the seven appointed to serve in Acts 6.  We heard the story of Stephen last week.  Stephen, proclaiming the story of Jesus, living it and telling it right to the end.  Earlier in chapter 8, we read that Phillip was called to do some proclaiming in Samaria.  He went down and proclaimed the Messiah to them.  Phillip has a successful ministry in Samaria.  Men and women are baptized.  Signs and great miracles take place.  The Holy Spirit is received when Peter and John come to visit.  “Now after Peter and John had testified and spoken the word of the Lord,” we read, “they returned to Jerusalem, proclaiming the good news to many villages of the Samaritans.” (8:25)

We might expect Phillip to be called to carry on in Samaria.  Not so with Phillip!  “Then an angel of the Lord said to Phillip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.)  So he got up and went.” (8:26-27a)  We’ve been talking, and we’ll keep on talking about the power of the Holy Spirit in us, Christ in us, the hope of glory.  We’ve talked and will continue to talk about the work of the Spirit in the church of any age, of the prayer to be filled with God’s Spirit, attuned to God’s Spirit, in tune with God’s Spirit.  Philip is very open to hearing about God’s leading.  “Take this wilderness road,” Phillip is told.  It’s deserted. “Go toward the south” can also mean “go at noon.” Who goes travelling down a wilderness road at the hottest part of the day?   Philip doesn’t wonder.  He just does it.  We may wonder why God puts us in certain situations with certain people.  Let us be present in those situations, in the presence of the Holy Spirit. We talked last week about living the story and telling the story.  May we be attentive to situations on which we may look back and say, “That came out of nowhere!  Thank you, Lord!”  Phillip doesn’t question.  He goes.

So he got up and went.  Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury.

And who would have thought.  This Ethiopian eunuch.  There was no country of Ethiopia at that time.  He was from the Kingdom of Cush, south of Egypt on the east side of the Nile (where southern Sudan is today).  The Minister of Finance (or Treasury Secretary if you like) for Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians (this was the title for the queen, not her name).  He happens to be travelling along the road at this hour, and happens to be reading from the prophet Isaiah. We know that in the reign of Christ, there’s no such thing as it just so happened. 

Now there are two things going on with this Ethiopian:

One - He’s a very highly placed court official.  He has juice.  He has money.  He could afford to buy an Isaiah scroll.  He can read.  He’s educated.  His Greek is elegant. 

Two – He is very much a person on the fringes.  Marginalized.  He’s sexually ambiguous.  A Eunuch was a male who had been castrated (testicles removed or crushed).  While one could volunteer, eunuchs were more often taken from the ranks of the enslaved or those captured in war.  For some, eunuchs were less than human.  Lucian of Samosata, a Syrian writer, wrote that eunuchs were “neither man nor woman but something composite, hybrid and monstrous, alien to human nature.”

He’s religiously ambiguous.  He had come to Jerusalem to worship.  As a eunuch, he was not allowed full participation in temple worship.  Is he a Gentile?  Is he a God fearer as others are described in Acts?  Is he a Jewish convert?  Castration would make him being a full convert impossible.  We just don’t know.

We do know this.  He is interested in God, and God is pursuing him.  The Spirit says to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.”  The word for join it can mean stick to it.  Come alongside it and stay there.  Philip (you have to love Philip) runs up and, as he comes alongside the chariot (which is a travelling chariot, not the war chariots you see in Ben-Hur), he hears this man reading the prophet Isaiah.

This was a point of contact.  I have to say, I think we have many points of contact with people all around us who might not be familiar with this story.  When you see millions of Canadians caught up in the story of a baseball team, does this not show something about how we were created to be a part of something bigger than ourselves?  When people talk about sending vibes one’s way or good vibrations, what does this say about prayer and the Holy Spirit?   When people speak and act against injustice, does this not speak to a feeling inherent in us that something is not right?  That something has gone wrong?

In this point of contact, Phillip asks a question.  It’s good to ask questions.  He doesn’t start with “Let me explain this to you.” He asks a question.  “Do you understand what you’re reading?”  This marvellous response comes back to him – “How can I, unless someone guides me?”  And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.

I don’t want us to miss the intensely personal and joyful nature of this story.  I said earlier that it’s not hard to come to an agreement on the sense that something has gone wrong in our world.  Something has gone wrong in the eunuch’s life.  Listen to the scripture he was reading.  It’s from the last of the four suffering servant writings in Isaiah:

Like a sheep, he was led to the slaughter and, like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth.  In his humiliation, justice was denied him.  Who can describe his generation?  For his life is taken away from the earth.  The eunuch asks Phillip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?”  One writer phrases the question this way:

“Would someone help me understand this Scripture? Because this really hits close to home! I was just a young boy when they led me like a sheep, innocent and unaware of the slaughter, or of what I call “my nightmare.” I was like a lamb, silent before those with shears in hand, as my brain disengaged from the pain. So, I did not even open my mouth. I have been humiliated, this is an understatement, and though I have received position, power, and wealth, I have not received justice. Who can speak of my descendants, for I will never have children, nor a name to pass on? My life was stolen from me. So, tell me, Philip, who was the prophet talking about? Himself? Or me?”

Then Phillip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.  God has come for this eunuch in all the complexity and ambiguity of his life. He matters.  What has been done to him does not determine the ultimate significance of his life.  I am not defined by the worst thing that ever happened to me, or the worst thing I have ever done, for that matter.  There is a place for him in the kingdom of God because Jesus is the suffering one described in the Isaiah passage.  There is a place for him in the kingdom of God because Jesus has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.  Jesus is the servant who suffers and dies a shameful death, but that is not the end of the story.  In Jesus' death is not the end of the story.  Jesus was raised from death to be the firstborn of all creation, which he will make new. In Jesus our shame is taken away as we are given a whole new identity as beloved children of God.  Jesus is our honour, our peace, our hope, our joy, our love. 

The good news is for everyone.  If these two travelling companions looked a little farther in the scroll of Isaiah, they would have read this. 

Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, “The Lord shall surely separate me from his people”; and do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: to the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me, and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. (Is 56:3-5)

So let us hold fast.  There would be no sons or daughters for the eunuch, of course.  A dry tree?  Not at all.  Because the new covenant has been sealed with the blood of Christ, and in Christ we are made new and given a new name and brought into a new family, and this is everlasting and shall not be cut off.

That’s the story. The question is, “What do we do with this Jesus?”  This Ethiopian brother’s response is “Look, here is water!  What is to prevent me from being baptized?”  The answer, of course, is not a thing!  Phillip and he go down into the water, and Phillip welcomes him into the family.  Philip is snatched away and finds himself in Azotus, and keeps on proclaiming the good news until he comes to Caesarea, where we’ll run into him years later. The new brother goes on his way rejoicing.  Who would have thought?  Out of nowhere.  We don’t know what happened to him, but early church tradition has it that he becomes the evangelist to the Nubian kingdom, starting the Ethiopian Orthodox Church that continues to this day. 

Who knows what might happen when we come alongside people and are given the opportunity to tell of how all the promises of God find their “Yes” in Christ.  May the Spirit give us the wisdom and strength to say “Yes” to where God calls us to be and to share.  May this be true for us all. Amen

A few years ago, Nicole and I went to an event put on by a couple of organizations called “Facing History and Ourselves Canada” and the “Azrieli Foundation.”  Facing History is an organization whose goal is to help high-school students engage with the past in order to combat racism and bigotry, while the Azrieli Foundation seeks to give Holocaust survivors opportunities to make their stories known.  The evening basically provided a forum for two men to tell their stories.  One was Nate Leipciger, a Jewish survivor of several Nazi concentration camps.  Born in Poland, as a child, he was taken to Auschwitz with his father after they were separated from his mother and sister, whom they never saw again.  The second man was a residential school survivor.  Theodore Fontaine.  He was taken from the only home he had ever known at the age of 6 in 1948.   They have both written books.  Ahead of the event we attended, their had been read by over 100 high school students from around the province, who all had a chance to make some art to reflect the stories of these two men, to meet them, and to get to know them.

The whole thing was very moving and spoke very much of the power of story, particularly when it comes to trauma.  The power of sharing stories.  Mr. Fontaine spoke of starting to write his own story down years ago, submitting a piece anonymously to a paper out west.  He spoke of a friend contacting him and asking if he were the one who wrote the story.  His friend told him, “I thought I was the only one.”  The power of a story.  As one of the speakers from the Azrieli Foundation said that night, “A story can change the world.”

A story can change the world.  A story can save the world. The power of story.

Stephen applied his life to the story of Jesus.  I hope this if helpful to us as we seek to come to an ever greater understanding/to take seriously what it means to follow Jesus.  To follow Jesus does not simply mean I have made a decision for Jesus at some point in my life which may or not have any meaning in my life today.  This does not mean that responses we make to Jesus at points in our life are not important.  To follow Jesus does not simply mean that I agree with a set of propositions about Jesus, although there are articles of faith about Jesus which all followers of him share.  To follow Jesus is not simply to read stories in the Bible and choose ways to apply them to my life.  In Christ you see, it’s not even my life anymore.  To follow Jesus is to apply my life (all I am, all I have) to the story of Jesus. 

It means a total reorientation of my life.  It means being formed in the very image of Jesus as we go along together.  I’m talking fundamentally about the great truth with which the US Presbyterian Church began their 1991 Brief Statement of Faith – “In life and in death we belong to God.”  That, dear friends, is my story.  I live for it and I would die for it and I will die in it.

I know I may fail from time to time when it comes to practicality, and you may be saying, “What does it mean to apply my life to God’s story?”  It means to trust it/listen to it/hear people talk about it/sing about it/share it/live it out each and every day.  This is what Stephen did right to the end.  Stephen was faithful right to the end just like the one he called Lord.  In the power of the Holy Spirit Stephen performed signs and wonders.  He was full of grace Luke tells us, right in line with Jesus who is the only other person in the NT who is so described (John 1:14).  Falsely accused just like his Lord, murdered and praying for himself and those who were killing him just like his Lord.

The first martyr for our faith.  The man who is remembered on the day after Christmas.  We heard last week about seven men who were chosen to wait on tables or to keep accounts.  Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, Nicolaus, and Stephen – a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit.  Oftentimes in church, particularly a smaller church, our roles are not simply restricted to one thing.  Such was the case for Stephen.  We are told by Luke that Stephen did great wonders and signs among the people.  We are seeing the life and work of Jesus continuing in his followers.  False charges being brought against Stephen.  “He’s saying Jesus will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed down to us!”  Stephen being brought before the council (the Sanhedrin).  There is a widening of opposition in our story.  Where formerly it had been temple leaders opposing the apostles, we see here that the people are stirred up along with the elders and the scribes.  All who sat in the council looked intently on him.  They looked intently at him and his face was like the face of an angel.  Living in the story of Jesus changes us you see. It might even affect our outward appearance.

Stephen begins to speak.  He doesn’t mount what one might think would be a typical courtroom defense, seeking to put doubt in people’s minds about his accusers, or prove their falseness, or try to explain what it was he’d been talking about.  He tells a story. I like to call it God’s Great Redemption Plan.  God’s Great Salvation Plan.  Love’s redeeming work is how one hymn puts it.  The plainest way I can put it is that God’s Great Salvation Plan is God’s plan to make everything right.  The story of how God set about, is setting about, will set about putting it right. Whether we live and tell the story in the face of opposition or in the face of anything from mild curiosity to deep interest, we should be able to tell the story too. The Holy Spirit will help us tell the  story. People have an interest in talking about the transcendent.  They have an in interest in talking about matters of faith.  We all of us hold a faith position you see.  All of us have a story to which we are applying your lives.  People have in interest in hearing a story. 

Stephen begins to tell this story of faith.  “Listen to me,” he says.  Listen.  I love that.  I can’t imagine Stephen was not excited by the story of the God of glory.  “The God of glory appeared to our ancestor Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia…”  He takes it all the way back.  We didn’t even have time to read it all this morning but do look it over. 

He tells the story of a man who stepped out in faith.  Abraham.  A man to whom a promise was given.  God’s story is about promises made and promises fulfilled.   It’s a story of people waiting faithfully.  Abraham was promised that he would become the father of a nation that would blessed by God to be a blessing to all nations.  A man who became the father of Isaac who became the father of Jacob who had twelve sons.  One of these sons (Joseph) was chosen by God to effect deliverance for his people.  The saving of lives.  This son was rejected by his brothers, sold into slavery.  Years later the actions of Joseph would result in the saving of his family  their people.  Forgiving them, he would tell his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”  This is what God does.

Years go by, and an Egyptian Pharaoh who does not remember Joseph enslaves the Israelites.   God will bring deliverance about through an Egyptian-educated man from Pharoah’s court.  Moses is chosen by God to lead his people to freedom.  Moses is rejected with the words “Who made you a ruler and judge over us?” This speaks to a long history of humanity rejecting God’s chosen ones.  The people wanting to worship something made with their own hands – a golden calf.  God’s saving plan goes on in the face of this rejection.  The promise if God will later come through Moses, that “God will raise up a prophet for you from your own people…”

God’s story is one of promise and presence.  Progressive presence.  God’s presence being manifested in the wilderness, travelling along with the people in a tent.  Later a temple is built by Solomon as the location of God’s presence in Jerusalem  Later the Word becomes flesh and makes his dwelling among us, full of grace and truth.  The Righteous One as Stephen calls Jesus, who was killed, who was raised to life.  Who brings life.  Who sits at the right hand of the Father.  The One whose return we await.  The Righteous One who is with us in the person of the Holy Spirit of God.

This was Stephen’s story. This is our story my friends.  The story is ongoing.  We’re invited to become a part of the story.  How has the story of redemption worked itself out in your life?  How is it working itself out in your life?  How do you express it?

We need to be able to express it.  We need to ask for the help of the Holy Spirit in expressing it.  We have a good place to express it within our faith family here don’t we?  Do we take the opportunity to share our faith stories with one another?   Do we need to create more opportunities?  What might that look like?  We’re pretty open to things.   One of the advantages of being a small church is that we can be pretty nimble when it comes to trying new things.

This story that Stephen tells invites us to consider ourselves.  The story calls us to (or back to) a single-hearted devotion to God and God’s great delivering story.  There are other stories that would call us away from it.  There are other stories that vie for our devotion.  We talked last week about having rebellious streaks in the kingdom of God.  We’ve talked about Jesus’ words “Not so with you.”  This salvation story, this story of Jesus, is something different.  In applying our lives and deaths to the story of Jesus, we are rejecting all other stories that would attempt to make a claim on human lives and deaths.  Such as…  Life is about pursuing the Canadian dream.  What is that exactly and for whom might it be nightmare?  Stories like You get what you deserve in this life.  Life’s hard and then you die and life is what you make it (It is what it is!).  Stories like “You’re the star of your own show” (Main character syndrome).  Look out for yourself at all costs (and your family and friends if you’re a really good person).  Win this and your dreams will be realized beyond your ability to imagine (to the point where you’ll need a dream coach).  Is that the story?  The most significant power is economic and military power, and powerful nations determine the course of world history.  If “lesser” nations suffer, then that’s just the way it is. 

Not so with us, dear Christian!

We’re talking matters of life and death here.  Stephen applied his life to the story of Jesus faithfully right to the end.  Stephen is joined to Jesus in life and in death.  Stephen gets a glimpse of the truth and he tells about it.  His witness is faithful right to the end.  “But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’”  No stone is going to separate him from God’s love, you see.

Death does not have the last word in the story of God.  We lament the loss of course.  We don’t paper over tragedy and loss or normalize persecution or say that it’s necessary or might even be welcome.  We read that “Devout men buried Stephen and made loud lamentation over him.”  We mourn knowing that in life and in death, we belong to God.  The story goes on.  “That day a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Jerusalem and Samaria.”  One of the scattered is Philip, whom we’ll hear about next week.  The story goes on.

“You intended to harm but, but God intended it for God,” said Joseph, “But God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”  This is the story of God.  May God give us the strength and wisdom to keep on telling it, to keep on living it, to keep on inviting others into it.  May this be true for us all.  Amen

How many of us have a rebellious streak within us?  I hope we can all say we do, at least in some small way.   Rebellious streaks should feel quite at home in the kingdom of God.  We are talking about leadership and service, and I am thinking of how leadership is practiced so often in our world.  Leaders who lead in order to profit themselves.  Leaders who seem to be all about self-aggrandizement, self-gain, cronyism, transactionalism, quid pro quos, etc., etc.

In the middle of this, let us who are listening for the word of God once again hear Jesus stand up and say, “But not so with you!”  We brushed up against these words last week, and I want us to take a better look at them in light of the story we’re reading in Acts 6.  Luke 22 – a dispute arises among the disciples:

A dispute also arose among them as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest.  But he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority are called benefactors.  But not so with you; rather, the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves.  For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves?  Is it not the one at the table?  But I am among you as one who serves.”  Luke 22:24-27

The truth about God that underlies all that we read here, and indeed our lives when we are in Christ.  “But I am among you as one who serves.”  We stand together in direct opposition to anyone who speaks or acts otherwise.

1. Rule breakers when the rules say things like “You must stop teaching in Jesus’ name.”  The religious rulers in Jerusalem had said this, and the apostles had been thrown in prison.  Look at these lines from ch. 5:

Then the high priest took action; he and all who were with him (that is, the sect of the Sadducees), being filled with jealousy, arrested the apostles and put them in the public prison.  But during the night, an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors, brought them out, and said, “Go stand in the temple and tell the people the whole message about this life.”  When they heard this, they entered the temple at daybreak and went on with their teaching. Acts 5:17-21a

See?  Rebels.  Can’t stop, won’t stop.  We’re not going to stop.

The thing about the temple authorities was, they were so busy trying to preserve a tradition that they failed to recognize truth when they heard and saw it.  In the church, we do not throw away tradition – I know many traditions are incredibly meaningful and important – but neither are we bound by it.  We are not bound by “We’ve never done that before” or “We’ve always done it this way.”  Particularly in the face of new challenges. 

We say challenges when we really mean to say problems.  We remember that this Christ community in Jerusalem (because that’s still where we are remembered) continued in the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers.  We remember that they were all of one heart and one soul, that no one was needy among them.  Good!  Widows were being cared for.  Widows and orphans in the story of God are representative of those who need help.  Good!  The disciples were increasing in number.  Good!

1. More people, more problems. 

Now, during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food.  Or the daily service of food.  The word from which we get 'deacon'.  Service.  It comes up again in v4, translated “wait on tables” (serve tables) and “serving the word.”

And those words of Jesus echo, “But I am among you as one who serves.”  Luke 22:27

We said last week that Luke is not describing an idealized church.  We’re not ideal, and we need God’s grace.  I must say, when something is going wrong in church, we should not be afraid to speak about it out of love for God, love for Christ’s church, and love for one another.  The twelve apostles do not get defensive or dismissive.  They deal with the problem together.

What is the problem exactly?  Discrimination is happening.  Whether it was intentional or an oversight, a group of people are being discriminated against.  Two groups in the church are described.  The Hellenists were Jewish followers of Jesus who had come from the Jewish diaspora – the scattering of people that had occurred over hundreds of years, mainly due to invasion and conquest.  They were from all over the Greco-Roman world (Saul of Tarsus was one), spoke Greek, and no doubt followed some Greek customs. We may think of them as immigrants to Jerusalem.  The Hebrews were locals who were following Jesus and spoke Aramaic and/or Hebrew.  The Hellenist widows are being neglected in the daily serving of food.

The twelve called together the whole community of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables (or keep accounts as it might be translated, which is interesting in light of our money talk last week).”  “We, for our part, will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word.”

What’s the word?  Let’s hear it again from week three:

1) The coming of the kingdom of God is at hand. 2) This has taken place through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  3)  Jesus is exalted and sits at the right hand of God the Father.  4)  The Holy Spirit has been sent to inhabit and empower the church.  5)  The Age of the Spirit will reach its consummation or fulfillment when Jesus returns.  6)  Forgiveness, the Holy Spirit, salvation/deliverance/redemption come with repentance  - a reorientation of my life toward God in trust and dependence.

This is not to say that preaching and teaching and to be held above making and serving food.  Neither stands alone.  The apostles had been commissioned by Jesus to be witnesses.  Serving the word and prayer were to be their main concerns.

We are coming up to a season in Blythwood in which we will be naming leaders for 2026.  Some will be continuing in leadership.  Some will be new to commissioned leadership in our church.  Some will be letting go of the role.  I want to spend the rest of our time looking at what this story tells us about leadership in the kingdom of God, where Jesus is always beside us, saying, “But I am among you as one who serves.”    So whether we are a leader, whether we are newly called into leadership, whether we one day might be called into leadership, whether we want to know what to expect from our leaders…

Service tasks are delegated.  It is not simply about one person or even a group of people in a church.  In the same way that Jesus sent the 12 out in Luke 9 and the 70 out in Luke 10, we are all sent from here every Sunday to serve.  Let us continue to discern together what gifts God has given us and how we may be able to give of those gifts in God’s service.  Opportunities to serve can come about from what seems like the most mundane everyday things.  Nothing is mundane in the kingdom of God.  Everything matters when we are engaged in kingdom matters!

The decision as to who would be appointed to lead was not foisted on the church from above.  The problem came about as a result of a daily practice, and the whole church was involved in coming to know God’s will together.  If any group of people might have made a decision for the church, it would surely have been the 12 apostles.  They had spent so much time personally with Jesus after all!  “Select from among yourselves…” they tell the church.  The only thing they lay out is the number (7) and that they be men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom.”  Does this mean only men in church leadership?  You may say yes, many do.  I would simply point out the number of women involved in leading, teaching, and organizing in the book of Acts.  May they be of good standing.  May your leaders be beyond reproach, because we know the damage leadership can do when leaders go wrong.  May they be full of the Spirit and full of wisdom.  Pray for your leaders.

Leadership may lead us to unexpected places.  Wherever He Leads I Will Go is an old hymn of the church.  When we are willing to be led by Jesus, he may take us to unexpected places and reveal unknown gifts.  While the official job of the seven was to serve tables (or accounts), we are going to hear of Stephen getting up to preach.  We will hear of Phillip becoming a preacher to Samaria as the witness spreads out from Jerusalem, just as Jesus said.  My first “vocational ministry” position was here at Blythwood as the Children’s Education Co-ordinator – a title that in no way describes the blessing those children were to me (and I pray I was to them, too).  When we answer God’s call, we find the promise coming to true that God is able to do far more than we could ask or imagine. 

Seven men are called to serve.  Say their names – Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, together with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch.  The good news is for everyone, including Nicolaus, who wasn’t even Jewish by birth, but a convert (this is new).  Jewish converts are represented in this leadership.  Speaking of representation, look at this list of names.   They don’t sound like OT names, do they?  They’re Greek names.  Luke doesn’t say so explicitly, but it’s safe to assume that this group of leaders were Hellenists.  Part of that diaspora minority group living in Jerusalem.

Speaking as a member of the non-diaspora majority group, let me say that we have much to learn from those who have left their homeland.  Such people have been the growth of this church in recent years (and many other churches in the West besides us).  We may need to learn what it means to be part of a diaspora, because as Christians, we’re all, in a sense, displaced, longing for our home, seeking to know what it means to live faithfully in exile as the people of God.  How are those welcomed who look different, speak differently, dress differently, and eat differently?  How is the multi-ethnic reality of our city and (hopefully) our churches reflected in church leadership?  May God give us grace and wisdom as we consider these questions.

And as we learn from each other, too.  Having Greek backgrounds no doubt was helpful to Stephen and the six in making sure that all in this Christ community were being served fairly.  How might our own cultures play a role in helping us come to a deeper understanding of what it means to be the community of Christ in Toronto in 2025 (almost 2026?).  I think of cultures that so emphasize communality in the face of the rampant individualism by which we can be influenced.  I’m a child of diaspora (Irish), and I like to quote an ancient Irish proverb from time to time, which goes, “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.”  One of the commentaries I’m reading on Acts is by a Filipino-American theologian named Jordan Cruz Ryan.  In writing of fellowship or koinonia, he writes of “bayanihan.”  This is a Filipino word that means community togetherness.  It’s symbolized by the image of a group of villagers carrying someone’s house when it’s in danger of being lost due to weather and needing to be moved.  Everyone carrying poles on their shoulders on which the house sits as it’s moved.  Together.  October was Pastor Appreciation Month in the CBOQ (I never like to point it out, but you may remember for next year), and we hosted a lunch here for our Toronto association, Toronto Baptist Ministries.  There was much representation among church leadership in terms of country and age and experience and language and gender.  You may not think representation is a big deal, but as MLK’s daughter Bernice King said, “If you don’t think representation matters, you’re probably well represented.”

The word of God continued to spread; the number of the disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.  May God continue to help us to be faithful to his kingdom’s call.

Amen

We weren’t talking primarily about money that day.  Today we are.

The basis upon which we look at money is the same basis upon which we are called to see everything and everyone. As it’s been a while since we’ve been together, I want to repeat something that we said as we began this story of Acts together, as we consider what it means for us as the church to live life together:

The book of Acts tells of Jesus’ followers – indwelt by, empowered by, guided by, transformed by the Holy Spirit, unstoppably bearing witness (making known, declaring) in word and in deed the good news of Christ; and in so doing fulfilling the divine plan.

There’s something really key to note at the beginning of our reading this morning.  Look at verse 33 – “With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus (because Christ is risen), and great grace was upon them all.”  Look at the two verses that bracket this action – “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and one soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”  (2:32)  Then, “There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned land or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.  They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” (2:34-35)

Christ is risen.  We’re talking about new life.  We’re talking about a new way of being; a new way of living life together.  Poverty had been eliminated in this group of Christ followers.  Wow!

We’re talking about giving.  We’re talking about living in what I like to call an open-handed stance or posture.  Living open-handedly.  This very much goes against what we see happening all around us.  Income disparity.  The widening gap between the haves and have-nots.  Reducing people to labels like 'haves' and 'have-nots'.  Relationships being reduced to transactions.  The worthy of a person determined by how much they have.  The so-called wisdom of the world.  Cash is king!  Those who have the gold make the rules.  Gotta get that bag.  We’ve come to hear good news this morning, so let us hear these words from Jesus in the midst of all that noise.  “It will not be so among you.”

It will not be so with you.  It will not be so with us, beloved and Holy Spirit-filled people of God.  Christ is risen and Jesus is Lord, and life in Christ is not only about going to see Jesus when we die and whatever happens in the meantime happens.  It is about life in Christ that goes beyond death, of course.  We want to take what it means to be in Christ (along with Christ in you, the hope of glory) seriously and be ever more coming to a fuller understanding of what this means.  Life in Christ is forgiveness.  Life in Christ is living in the grace of God.  Life in Christ is restoration or wholeness.  Life in Christ is belonging in a community where mutual support is the thing. 

Life in Jesus is not about separating spiritual matters and temporal matters.  Perhaps we should talk in terms of kingdom matters.  Everything is a kingdom matter.  I want to take this seriously.  It’s a matter of life and death.  We see this reflected in Barnabas, Ananias, and Saphira. 

Luke is describing the early church, and he’s not painting an idealized picture.  This story is harsh.  It’s also beautiful.  That line between harshness and beauty runs through each congregation.  If we look at ourselves honestly, we may find it runs through each and every one of us. 

Here’s the beauty. 

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and one soul…  The church was living in the power of the resurrected Christ.  New life.  Life in the Holy Spirit of God.  The prophet Jeremiah had described it like this: “I will give them one heart and one way…” (Jer 32:39).  One heart.  One love.  You don’t have to be in church to hear this message or to get this message – to get its inherent rightness.  Luke’s audience would have been familiar with lines like these from Aristotle – “Among friends ‘everything is common’ is quite correct, for friendship consists of sharing.”  Or this – “A friend is one soul dwelling in two bodies.”  We learn this ideal from a very young age.  It’s a lesson that we need to learn.  “Caring Means Sharing” was the title of the 9^th episode in the first season of Barney. 

Everyone can get behind this idea, right?

The thing was, in this community, it was happening.  Everything was shared, including their possessions. It’s a description of how the church was operating in Jerusalem at the time.  A whole new way of living was being enacted.  This is what the Holy Spirit was enabling in this community.  A whole new social order.  People continued to own things.  The church continued to meet in houses.  They shared.   We have become sharers in the life of the risen Christ.  We are sharers in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.  With great power, the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.  There was not a needy person among them.  Again, looking back to the OT, the commands are being fulfilled through the power of God’s grace and the Holy Spirit filling this community of faith. Deut 15:4 – “There will, however, be no one in need among you, because the Lord is sure to bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a possession to occupy,”

God’s grace was being worked out in tangible ways.  Being of one heart and one soul does not simply mean all agree on everything – we most certainly don’t.  Rather, being of one heart and one soul works out in tangible ways, including what we do with our time and what we do with our money.  This community was to be/is to be a reflection of how we were created to live, how we were created to do life together and how we are enabled to live and to do life together.  In our day we stand in direct opposition to a world where your number one concern is yourself and the accumulation of money and stuff because that, after all, is where we find our security. 

In the midst of this we stand and declare that is it by the grace of God and absolutely no merit of our own that we are sharers in the life of the crucified and risen Christ Jesus and that this truth is for every aspect of our lives.

“As many as owned houses or land sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.  They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as they had need.”  There was no requirement.  The distribution was made on an as-needed basis. No one had too much, no one had too little.  It was a principle that would encompass not only individuals, but churches.  It became a thing to such an extent that Paul had to warn the church in Thessalonica about people in the church taking advantage of generosity and freeloading (2 Thess 3:10).  The early church writing the Didache talked of welcoming people coming in the Lord’s name.  They must not stay except two or three days, the Didache outlined.  “If they wish to settle among you, let them not be idle.  If they don’t cooperate, they are Christ-peddlers.  Beware of such!”  The point here is that the concept of sharing was such a thing that the church had to be warned about the potential dangers.

And then Luke provides us with an example.  Isn’t it wonderful to learn by example from people who reflect the ways of God? We thank God for such people, don’t we?  Joseph from Cyprus.  Cyprus Joe.  He’ll reappear in our story later.  The apostles gave him a nickname.  Barnabas.  Son of encouragement.  Lord help us to live up to such a name!  Daughter of encouragement.  Son of encouragement.  The Holy Spirit was working powerfully through Barnabas. He sold a field.  We don’t know where the field was.  It could have been back in Cyprus.  The point, though, is that he sold a field, then brought all of the money that had been paid for that field and laid it at the disciples’ feet.

Distribute it as needed, so that no one would be in need.  This was the kind of thing that the Spirit of God was doing among this group of people. 

Then we have the story of Ananias and Saphira. It is not all just sweetness and light for the church, as anyone who has been around churches for any significant amount of time knows.  How much do we need God’s grace? It’s not just about threats or indifference or challenges from without.  They exist within as well.  The Spirit of God is moving and working, and at the same time, Satan is going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.  Someone has has said this about sin, “Sin is a parasite, an uninvited guest that keeps tapping its host for sustenance. Nothing about sin is its own; all its power, persistence, and plausibility are stolen goods. Sin is not really an entity but a spoiler of entities, not an organism but a leech on organisms. Sin does not build shalom; it vandalizes it.”  The Satan, the liar, the tempter, the deceiver, wants to make his voice heard.  The same voice who said to Jesus “If you are the Son of God then serve yourself, seek fame, seek power.”  The voice that says, “This is yours, you worked hard for it.”  The voice that says, “I’m just barely getting by myself, what can I be expected to do?” or “Security is to be found in your financial assets, hold on to what you have and make it a primary goal to get as much as you possibly can.”  Where is this getting humanity? We listen to Jesus’ voice.  Why do you worry about your security, what you will eat, drink, wear, when your heavenly Father knows you need them?  My security is in Christ, and his grace is enough.  Let us ask for boldness in our generosity. It’s maybe not greed that causes us to hold on as much as fear – fear of market collapse, fear of property values dropping, fear of running out of money in retirement.  To grow and mature in our rootedness in Christ is to grow in trust that he is our security.  To grow in generosity.  Open-handedness. 

1. Giving money and goods away (funny that we call possessions goods) is not about meeting a requirement.  I’ve said before, I’ll never stand up here and make an appeal for cash.  Having said that, there are financial aspects to continuing to be the church in this context in North Toronto.  We are called to be supportive.  The ancient tithe or 10% has long been a guideline for Christians.  We all need to work that out together and with God.  There was no requirement of selling everything and laying it at the apostle’s feet in this community of faith.  There wouldn’t have been a problem for Ananias and Sapphira to say, “Hey, we sold this property for $40,000 and want to give the church half!”  Great!  It was the lying about it.  It was the misrepresentation.  It was the religious hypocrisy. 

They both die, and this seems harsh.  Let us look at the rest of that verse we looked at earlier from Jeremiah.  “I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me for all time, for their own good and the good of their children after them.”  This is not to see that we need to be walking around fearfully thinking, “Holy Spirit, please don’t kill me.”  We’re talking about fear of our holy God.  Awe.  Reverence of a God who is as close as our breath and at the same time is wholly other.  God, who has promised to one day make everything right, and this making right project is already underway.  We’re called to be a part of it, and lying to one another is completely antithetical to this project.  It meant death for Ananias and Sapphira.  There are consequences to such actions.  Self-serving deceit is the opposite of life together. It is the death of life together.  Moses laid out the choice long ago to the people of Israel. “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Choose life…”

Choose life.  Choose life in the risen Christ.  Choose grace.  We’re coming to the Lord’s Table where we remember and celebrate and look forward to grace – unmerited goodness from the generous God to whom we belong.  May our eating and drinking together be a sign of our desire to be shaped in the image of Jesus, living in a posture of openhandedness.  May this be true for all of us.   Amen.

A story is told of a young man who snuck into a church one morning, hoping nobody would notice him.  He was interested in a young woman who sang in the choir.  The young man hoped that after the service, he would have a chance to talk to her and ask her out on a date.  Though he was unfamiliar with church, he saw people sitting and he took his own place next to an aisle.  Shortly before the service was about to start, he was approached by someone who told him that the person scheduled to read the scripture that morning couldn’t make it.  Could the young man fill in?  Thinking that this would be a good chance to get him noticed by the young woman in the choir and feeling that he had a pretty good speaking voice, the young man agreed.  He quickly reviewed the passage before the service started.

When the appropriate time came, the young man took his place at the front and began to read from John’s Gospel.  “Anyone who doesn’t enter the sheepfold by the gate,” he heard his own voice say, “but climbs in by another way, is a thief and a bandit.”  He was amazed.  This was what he’d done!  He was standing here, pretending to be a regular Bible-reader, when in fact he’d only come in to meet a girl.  He forced himself to go on, aware of his heart beating loudly.  If he was a bandit, coming in under false pretences, what was the alternative?  “I am the gate for the sheep,” said Jesus.  “The bandit only comes to steal, kill and destroy.  I came that they might have life, and have it full to overflowing.”  Suddenly, something happened inside the young man.  He stopped thinking about himself.  He stopped thinking about the girl, about the congregation, about the fact that he’d just done a ridiculous and hypocritical thing.  He thought about Jesus.  Unaware of the shock he was causing, he swung round to the clergyman leading the service.  “Is it true?” he asked.  “Did he really come so that we could have a real, full life like that?”  The clergyman smiled.  “Of course,” he replied, “That’s why we’re all here.  Come and join in the next song and see what happens if you really mean it.”  And the young man found himself swept off his feet by the presence and love of Jesus, filling him, changing him, calling him to follow like a grateful sheep, after the shepherd who can be trusted to lead the way to good pasture by day and safe rest at night.  He got much more than he bargained for.”

In our story today, we have a man who received much, much more than what he bargained for.  We have a man who receives life.  Wholeness brought about by the one whom Peter will call the Author of life.  The path-maker of life.  Jesus.

We are looking at a story of what the good news does.  Last week, we looked at the activities of this community of faith, how they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  This community was not just existing for themselves or their own existence.  It wasn’t all about them.  There is a hymn called “Sweet Hour of Prayer” which contains the line “Which draws me from the world of care.”  We don’t stay withdrawn.  Our pattern of life together, beloved church, is like that of a heart.  Diastolic and systolic.  We’re drawn together in a big way weekly (and in smaller ways through the week) and then sent from here.  Just as blood goes to the heart, then to the lungs to be oxygenated, and then back to the heart and sent to different parts of the body.  We come together to be oxygenated and are then sent. 

“One day, Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer at three o’clock in the afternoon.”  They were out there.  For the earliest followers of Christ, it was a matter of continuing in the religious tradition they had known. This included daily prayers at the temple.  On their way to praise, they are not called to ignore what is going on around them.  They are called to see with the eyes of Jesus.  We remember the time Matthew tells us, “When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matt 9:36)  Someone has said, “The path toward significant prayer is a way that goes straight through, not around, human misery.”

Not only does it go through, but it stops.  We're talking a lot about stopping. I know there are things we have to do.  Stopping  Waiting on God.  We’re called to stop as we go through our days, too.  We’re not called to look at people as interruptions.  I’ve said this before about the phrase “Sorry to bother you.”  I told someone that once, and they replied, “You’re never a bother to me.”  How gracious.  Some of Jesus’ most important work was done in the interruptions.  Healing happened with Jesus in the interruptions. 

A man lame from birth was being carried in.  A man who was in a situation from which he could not extricate himself.  A man who was in a situation which left him outside the worshipping community.  In those days, physical ailments were often seen as a sign of bad character.  Healthy, well-formed people were thought to be of higher moral value and just generally better.  I’m so glad we’re beyond that kind of thing now.  This man was of little value to anyone.  He would be placed daily at the gate of the temple called the Beautiful Gate.  Something beautiful is about to happen.  The gates of the temple were highly ornate, overlaid with gold, silver, and bronze.  Silver and gold – the way to a beautiful life.  Silver and gold – the signs of economic relationships that reduce connections to transactions and clearly separate the haves from the have-nots.  We are about to find out that things are different in the kingdom of God.

The gate is called the Beautiful Gate.  This man has been carried there, and he is lying there.  This is his spot, and if panhandling in 1st-century Jerusalem is anything like panhandling in 21st-century Toronto, I’m sure a lot of people were hurrying by avoiding eye contact.  People were no doubt giving him money and avoiding eye contact.  Perhaps some would stop, ask how he is, try to get the chance to know him, and share some bread.  I’ve often thought that one of the worst things about panhandling must be how one is ignored.  How one can sit at the corner of a major intersection and not be recognized as a person by thousands who would walk by in the space of an hour or two. 

The man calls out to Peter and John.  They stop.  Peter looked intently at him, as did John.  The same word for intense looking we heard when Jesus preached in the Nazareth synagogue in Luke 4.  The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.  Their eyes are fixed on the man.  Surely this is the first step in recognizing our common humanity.  Surely this is the first step in recognizing need, in communicating need.  “Look at us,” says Peter.

Look at us.  Stop.  Look.  The man is expecting to receive something from them.  This man, who is in need of help, is about to get much more than he bargained for.

Peter says he doesn’t have any silver or gold.  Practically speaking, Peter didn’t have any cash on him.  The community had pooled their resources, remember, so this makes sense.  Are we to take this story to prove the Bible says we should never give money to people on the street?  I think not.  May the Holy Spirit guide us and give us wisdom and generous hearts.  How we view money matters, and what we do with the money God gifts us matters.  That is a matter for another day.  Here is the thing, though.  Our relationship with God, our relationships with one another, are not primarily economic or transactional.

When we speak of life in the Spirit/living in the grace of God/living in the reign of God/the good and beautiful life – this life that shapes our worship together and shapes our hearts and shapes our lives when we go from this place, with God’s help… when we speak of life lived in communion with our loving creating redeeming sustaining faithful God – we are not simply talking about short term financial relief (though that is included at times). 

This salvation story that we are caught up in, this deliverance story, God’s grand redemption plan – whatever it is you like to call it or however you like to think about it or whatever imagery we use to try and get our heads around it – it’s about restoration.  It’s about wholeness.  It’s about life.  It’s much more than simply economic relief.  But what I have, I give you, Peter tells the man.  In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.

Peter took him by the right hand.  Might have been the same hand that the man was holding out to receive funds.  It makes a great picture.  Peter reaching down for that hand and raising the man up who was in a situation from which he was unable to extricate himself.  The man was raised up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.  Jumping up, he stood and began to walk with them (because we’re not meant to do this walk alone), walking and leaping and praising God.

The servant Jesus.  The Holy and Righteous One.  The Author of life.  This is how Peter goes on to describe Jesus.  This is what Jesus does.  He brings life.  He brings wholeness.  He brings restoration.  One day, he will restore all things.  This formerly lame man is clinging onto Peter and John as Peter begins to preach again.  This man is a living object lesson of the wholeness that is found through faith.  Peter says, “Why do you stare at us (because it’s not about us, remember!), as by our own power or piety we made him walk?  The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors, has glorified his servant Jesus…”  By faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong…

His name itself has made this man strong.  His name itself has made this woman strong, no matter our physical condition.  This story is not about “You’re not healed because you lack faith” or a call to ableism.  People who are ailing, people who are disabled, can manifest the life and wholeness that God brings about. 

We’re called to enter into the suffering of others.  To look at it.  To bring the person of Jesus into it through his name.  We haven’t done a lot about prayers for healing in our tradition or in our church, and maybe we should do more.  We often think of faith healers we see on TV as charlatans, and we shouldn’t leave it to charlatans.  Do we believe the age of miracles is over? Some do, I suppose.  I don’t.  Jesus’ brother wrote about praying for the sick, having elders of the church pray over them, anointing them with oil – that symbol of the Holy Spirit.  This is what the good news does.  It brings life, wholeness, healing.  We’re not always cured by any means.  Writer Rachel Held Evans wrote about the difference between curing and healing – “… there is a difference between curing and healing, and I believe the church is called to the slow and difficult work of healing.  We are called to enter into one another’s pain, anoint it as holy, and stick around no matter the outcome.” 

The Author of life promises wholeness and restoration. What do we need to ask God about today?  Where is wholeness and restoration needed in us and in those we love?  Let us give thanks together for the promise that God is able to do more than we could ever ask or imagine, and rest in that promise together this Thanksgiving, and always.

Amen

In Christ, my life has been caught up in/grafted onto God’s story.  This means that “It’s not about me” is coming to affect how I see everything.  Scripture is not to be interpreted as “How is this about me?” or “How does this back up an opinion that I hold?”  Case in point: this past Sunday, after having gone 2-9 in receptions for a total of 7 yards in a win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver AJ Brown (feeling under-utilized by the team’s offensive strategy) took to social media to share a Bible verse -     'If you're not welcomed, not listened to, quietly withdraw. Don't make a scene. Shrug your shoulders and be on your way.'  (Mark 6:11 The Message)  In the grand sweep of God’s story, Jesus is giving instructions to his followers about how they received as his witnesses (witness is our business, remember).  In no way were those words intended as a way to respond to disgruntlement about the Eagles’ offensive strategy.

In conversation with someone recently, I was bemoaning the level of enmity that exists right now in our world.  I said that we are not called to see people as enemies, but are called to lovingkindness and mercy.  “That’s your truth,” was the reply.  I answered not very well with something like, “This is how I have come to see the world.”  What I should have said was “That is God’s truth, or gospel truth, or good news truth, or kingdom truth.”  It’s not my truth; it’s the kingdom of God's truth. Peter lays down the truth in Acts 2.  It’s not about him.  He is presented with the opportunity to speak.  “These people must be drunk,” some in the crowd are sneering.  Peter addresses that issue, and he starts with a little humour (as many speakers do).  It’s only 9 in the morning!  Peter then tells the crowd what’s going on.  He cites their scriptures and interprets these scriptures in the light of God’s story.  This is our story, dear church: 1) The coming of the kingdom of God is at hand. 2) This has taken place through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.  3)  Jesus is exalted and sits at the right hand of God the Father.  4)  The Holy Spirit has been sent to inhabit and empower the church.  5)  The Age of the Spirit will reach its consummation or fulfillment when Jesus returns.  6)  Forgiveness, the Holy Spirit, salvation/deliverance/redemption come with repentance  - a reorientation of my life toward God in trust and dependence.

That’s what it’s all about.

This is God’s story, and it’s still going on.  We remember the description of Acts from week one – “The Acts of the Risen Lord by the Holy Spirit in and through the Church.”  We celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit with a lot of joy last week.  I like to call Pentecost the Advent (the coming) of the Holy Spirit.  What about when the initial excitement is over, though?  Christmas is behind us.  Easter is behind us.  The big 3,000 people coming to Jesus' event is behind us.  What then?

What do we do with days and times that are a little more routine?  Maybe they’re worse than routine, filled with uncertainty and fear.  What do we do in the routine as people who belong to Christ?  What is the community that is filled by the Holy Spirit to do?

We persist.  We press on.  This is what I plan to do, God helping me, and I’m not the only one. “They devoted themselves,” we read.  Not hopelessly devoted.  Hopefully devoted.  Filled with hope, devoted.  There is an element to this word of being steadfastly attentive to, of giving unremitting care to, or perseverance.  Luke is describing the early church, and in this, we have an instruction for the church at any time.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.  We have an example of this teaching earlier in the chapter through Peter’s sermon.  The good news of Christ.  The good news of God’s grand redemption plan.  Forgiveness.  Reconciliation.  Peace.  Justice.  Grace.  Love.  We frame these things differently depending on who is being taught.  We’ll see how this works as we go through the book of Acts.  Paul’s message to the people of Athens is much different to Peter’s message to the people of Jerusalem.  The message is not just for those outside of the Christian faith, of course.  We need to be hearing it often and meaningfully.  We need to be asking what it means in our lives to be the recipients of God’s grace.  To ask ourselves what it means that Christ walks alongside us.  To ask what resurrection power is.  To ask what it means that God is with us, because Christmas and Easter are not just for one day a year each.  Are we making these opportunities available for people?  Are we availing ourselves of opportunities to learn?  The better that we might have a share in one another’s lives.

1. That word that we keep talking about, and we’ll keep on talking about.  Koinonia.  Not simply what goes on in our fellowship time after church, though that’s very good.  Koinonia.  Participation.  Sharing.  Sharing one another’s lives.  Church as something different than the things that we might gather for with others through our lives.  Seeing a show, a movie, or a concert.  Everyone coming in and sitting and consuming whatever is on offer and then going out and going their separate ways.  Not seeing church as something which exists for our benefit, not something that is resulting in the question “What can I get out of this?”   What are we putting into this is the more operative question.  A turn away from the rampant individualism that is so prevalent in our society.  Showing a different way as we follow the Way along his way together.  It is not for nothing that Tolkien called the book “The Fellowship of the Ring.”  A group of disparate (and sometimes desperate) people (actually a couple of people, a couple of hobbits, an elf and a dwarf) joined in a common goal.  A group of people bearing one another’s burdens and in so doing fulfilling the law of Christ.  How are we doing with that?  In large part, we see it happening and we’re thankful for it.  Have we written the book on it?  Probably not.  All who believed were together and had all things in common.  Luke doesn’t tell us this was a rule or a requirement for entry into the community of faith.  Social arrangements were turned upside down.  Possessions are to be held onto loosely.  For this group, they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.    It wasn’t done on any other basis than according to who had need.  Paul reminds the church in Corinth of the principle in play here – As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.” (2 Cor 8:15)  Life for the community wasn’t all about grasping onto what was mine.  Someone has said that the first two words we learn as infants are often “mine” and “more”.  This is what the Holy Spirit was doing in this community of believers as they shared one another’s lives.  It wasn’t all about me and my stuff.  They were family.  In our families, we don’t talk about what’s mine as much as we talk about what’s ours – our house, our apartment, our food, our chair (though we might have our favourite chair).

And they broke bread together.  They spent time in the Temple together.  They praised God together.  They broke bread together.  Jesus revealed in the breaking of bread.  Recall Jesus in Luke’s Gospel going from table to table, sometimes causing controversy, revealing truths of God’s kingdom.  Remember Jesus being revealed when he sits down to eat with his followers in Emmaus.  They broke bread at home.  They shared meals in each other’s houses.  They broke bread at home and did so with glad and generous hearts.  They welcomed one another as God has welcomed us to his table, and they did so gladly and generously.  They were joyful about it.

They prayed.  They prayed together.  How are we doing with that?  Not too badly, maybe.  Perhaps we could do better.  We pray singly.  We pray in our small groups.  We pray once a month together over Zoom.  How are we doing with praying together as a community?  It is in prayer together that we are actively submitting to God’s direction.  It is in prayer together that we actively acknowledge our dependence on God. 

The four activities of the early church. The apostles’ teaching.  Fellowship.  The breaking of bread. The prayers.  Someone has described it like this – “… an ideal for the Christian community, which it must always strive for, constantly return to and discover anew, if it is to have the unity of the spirit and purpose essential for an effective witness.”

May God make these things true of us.

Awe came upon everyone.  Awe.  Wonder.  Wonderment at the signs and wonders that were being done by the apostles.  Christ’s work continuing in the community of Christ.  Signs of the kingdom.  New life.  Healing.  Wholeness.  Peace.  Joy.  We’ll be talking about these as we go through these weeks. 

Others were involved, too, though.  This community was not just existing for itself.  They ate their food with glad and generous hearts.  They praised God.  They had the goodwill of all the people.  They had goodwill toward all people.  People had goodwill toward them.  This fellowship, this being together, this spending time, this generosity was never just supposed to be all about us.  They had the goodwill of all the people.  Imperfect and in need of forgiveness and grace and transformation though they were, this community stood as a picture or a preview of the renewal of all things to come.

As we come to the Lord’s Table together, the table itself becomes a preview of the banquet toward which we look forward.  This is the place where we are taking part in and rehearsing fellowship with God – loving communion with God and with one another.  This is the place where we are freely admitting our need for, celebrating, and giving thanks for the mercy of God.  We’ll be sent from this place with the Holy Spirit's enablement and call to extend that same grace and mercy to all. 

The story isn’t all about me, or even about us.  This is who we are, though, when we are caught up together in the story of God’s love.  We often talk about programs in church.  Evangelistic programs, mission programs.  This was the church’s program.  The apostle’s teaching.  Fellowship.  Breaking of bread.  Prayers.  Every day, the Lord added to their number those who were being rescued.

Friends, we see these things happening here, and we thank God for them.  We want more of the same.  We want an awareness of where we’re failing, too.  Not to lay a guilt trip on ourselves, but to know what to ask God to do in and through us.   I want to end with some words from NT Wright on this passage, which outline our challenge and present a challenge to us – “Where the church today finds itself stagnant, unattractive, humdrum and shrinking… It’s time to read Acts 2.42 47 again, get down on our knees, and ask what isn’t happening that should be happening.  The gospel hasn’t changed.  God’s power hasn’t diminished.  People still need rescuing.  What are we doing about it?”

May this be the question of all our hearts, my dear friends.

Amen

This is our origin story, dear church.  Origin stories are important.  It’s been said that if you don’t know where you came from, you don’t know where you’re going.  Finding out where you come from can be an important factor for people as far as a sense of identity goes – this is why websites like ancestry.com are so popular, no?  This is our identity, dear church.  We heard about our mission last week.  Our business is witness.  We are declarers.  The Holy Spirit is our empowerment.  The Holy Spirit is God’s gift to us as we wait actively. 

I said last week we live in the age of the Spirit.  This picture depicts “God’s Big Story” or meta-narrative.  Creation.  Fall.  Redemption.  Consummation or renewal of all things, or a new heaven and a new earth, when Jesus returns.  We live in the line between redemption and consummation.   We walk the line.  But not alone.  The Holy Spirit is with us.

We are given different images in the Bible to help us in terms of our understanding of and knowing the person of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit as fire.  Consuming.  Refining. Burning away the part that is unwanted.  Unpredictable.  Wild.  The Holy Spirit as wind.  Again unpredictable.  Powerful.  The rush of a violent wind.  Uncontrollable.  “The wind blows where it chooses,” as Jesus once told a Pharisee who visited him under the cover of darkness.  The Holy Spirit as water, flowing like a river.  “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.  As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”  (John 7:37b-38) Now he said this about the Spirit, John tells us.  The Holy Spirit flowing from our hearts like rivers of living water!

The Holy Spirit as a bird.  The Holy Spirit descending like a dove on Jesus at his baptism.  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus declared in his hometown synagogue.  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.  The Spirit of the Lord is upon you.  I love how Paul describes following Christ as being “In Christ”.  The flip side of that phrase is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  Christ in me.  Christ in you.  The Holy Spirit of God in you.  The Holy Spirit of Christ in me.   Not because of any goodness or specialness of my own, but because the Holy Spirit is the gift of God.

The Holy Spirit is the fulfillment of the promise of God.  To live in Christ is to live in the promises of God.  Promises of peace.  Promises of accompaniment.  Promises of transformed hearts.  Promises of empowerment for the mission.  This morning in our text, we see the fulfillment of a promise.  “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49). “You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” (1:5)  “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (1:8)  

This is the promise. Here comes the fulfilment.  “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.” (2:1)  They were all together in one place.  In these days, when we have become unused to gathering together at particular times and at particular places, how important is it for us as followers of Christ to gather together in one place?  How important is it for us as followers of Christ to leave ourselves open to the power of God working in us and through us?  How important is it for us to share what the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives and in so sharing, learn from one another?  I’m not talking here about or trying to lay a guilt trip on those who are unable to gather due to physical limitations.  What is the importance of the call on our lives to be gathering together in one place, praying and praising and listening to God?

We remember, of course, that they were praying.  They were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.  One of my favourite ways to pray, one of my favourite things to pray for, is to ask God to fulfill God’s promises.  We talked about it last week.  Your Kingdom come, Lord.  Even so, Lord come.  Fill us with your Spirit.  Fill us with all your fullness.  Now one might find this presumptuous, insolent, or maybe even unnecessary. “Of course God’s going to fulfill his promises,” you may say, “You’re always going on about how God is faithful, which means that when God makes a promise, he keeps it, right?  Why would we need to remind God to fulfill his promises?  Wouldn’t that be a little annoying?”  It’s like you know when you’re going to do something, or you’re in the middle of doing something, and someone asks you to do it?  Isn’t that a little annoying?  Maybe it’s just me?  J

Here's the thing, though, about praying for God’s promises.  It renews our confidence.  It reminds us of our need for God, our dependence on God.  Someone has put it like this: 

“In a sense, this is what prayer is – the bold, even arrogant effort on the part of the community to hold God to his promises.  In praying ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,’ we pray that God will be true to himself and give us what has been promised.  Prayer is thus boldness born out of confidence in the faithfulness of God to the promises he makes, confidence that God will be true to himself.  What may appear as prayerful insolence by the church in praying that we shall receive the Spirit, the kingdom, the power, and restoration is in fact the deepest humility, the church’s humble realization that only God can give what the church most desperately needs.”

Only God can give what the church most desperately needs.  May God give us an ever-increasing sense of our need for God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Without God, none of this happens.  May we pray in the deepest humility for God to be faithful to God’s promises.  It becomes so freeing.  We’re not doing this on our own.  God is with us always. 

The day of Pentecost had come.  They are together in a particular place and at a particular time.  If we associate the word Pentecost with anything, it might be with the Protestant denomination, which so emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit and personal experience of the Holy Spirit (some of us have been formed and worshipped in that tradition).   Pentecost was a Jewish festival day that happened 50 days after Passover (the literal meaning of Pentecost is ‘fiftieth day”).  It was a harvest festival that celebrated God’s provision, God’s giving.  It came to also signify God giving the law to Moses at Mount Sinai.

Why is this significant to us?  When we listen for God speaking to us in God’s word, we consider the grand sweep of God’s story from creation to the renewal of all things.  When we consider the giving of the law to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai, we remember the mountain being wreathed in fire and swept by wind.  We remember the promise given through the prophet Jeremiah -  “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jer 31:33)  The Holy Spirit as God’s refining fire within us.  The Holy Spirit as the enabler of the fruit of the Spirit in us – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control.

A sound came like the rush of a violent wind.  At creation, a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  Again, we consider this story in the grand sweep of God’s story.  Something new is being created here.  The new thing that is being created is the church.  This is a pivotal moment!  Divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Each one of them had an individual experience of the Holy Spirit, as a tongue rested on each of them.  There’s no description of what that was like for Peter or James or John or Mary, or any other of the 120 that were gathered.  Luke’s emphasis here is on their collective experience.  The description we have is that all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit. 

In order for what?  In order that doors and walls may be dissolved (metaphorically, at least).  In order that the church might be empowered to go public with the message of the good news of Christ.  The thing about Pentecost or the Feast of Weeks is that it was a pilgrimage feast where Jewish people from all over would come to Jerusalem.  From as far east as Persia, west to Rome, down to North Africa, Arabia, Crete, the list goes on.  Look at what the crowd says about what they’re hearing these followers of Jesus say in their own languages – “… in our own languages, we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”

The church is given the ability to make God’s deeds of power known.  The miracle is in the speaking rather than the hearing.  The story might have gone that one of the apostles went out to preach to the crowds in Greek or Aramaic, and that miraculously everyone from all these different places understood.  “How is it that we hear each of us in our own native language… in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power?”

What does this mean? We’ve been talking about the loving-kindness of God.  We’ve been talking about God’s generosity.  Think what it meant to those people gathered from so many nations to hear the good news of God’s deeds of power in their own language.  Think about what our mother tongue means to us; how it evokes mothers, safety, security, and home.  Think about the number of people in our city who are trying to make their way in a language other than the one they learned from their parents (and maybe forgetting that language).  Think of what it might mean to be in a foreign city and hear someone speaking your language.  A Filipino friend told the story of being out and hearing a woman speaking Tagalog.  This woman was on the phone with family back home.  Homesick.  On the verge of tears.  My friend started talking to her when her phone call finished.  They became friends. 

The kingdom of God is for everyone, and it crosses national/ethnic/cultural/language lines. (Religious lines too, but we’ll get to that later in Acts.  All the followers of Christ are Jewish here.)  The kingdom of God crosses these lines and unites followers of Christ in a whole new way, but it does erase or efface them.  The kingdom of God is not “Everyone should assimilate,” or “We speak English here,” or “We worship this way,” or any of the number of ways in which in-groups set themselves up as superior.  Differences are not erased in the kingdom of God (we recognize and celebrate them), but their significance becomes secondary to the truth that we are united by something that goes beyond history or culture or language.

We are made one in the Holy Spirit of God.  I’ve had the chance to go to ordination services in some of our sister Chinese churches here in the GTA.  One of the things I love is singing the congregation singing “The Doxology” in Mandarin, Cantonese and English.  Wonderful!

In the power of the Spirit, our role is to make God’s unifying, forgiving, restoring deeds of power known in our words and in our actions.  This is our part to play as the Holy Spirit gives us power.  There are things beyond our control, like how people will react.  Some will sneer, and that’s ok.  They’re drunk. They’re deluded.  They’re…  Others will say, “What does this mean?”

There are people all around us who are homesick – literally sick, longing for a home, even if they’ve lived here all their lives.  So we’ll keep on living and telling the story. This is the church’s origin story.  A group of people empowered by the Holy Spirit to forge connections by inviting others into communities that celebrate and demonstrate the mighty acts of God, made known in the salvation of Christ Jesus, and that are being transformed (made more like Jesus) by the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ in us, the hope of glory.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

This is the plan.  This is the commission.  Witness is our business.  We are declarers, dear church.  This is a story that continues to this day.  To follow Jesus is to apply our lives to this story.  Throughout the story of God, God calls and forms a people for himself and for his purposes.  A group of people are called out – a church.  Traditionally, this book is called the Acts of the Apostles, but in reality, it is more like the Acts of God.  Someone has suggested “The Acts of the Risen Lord (because Christ is risen – this is where we start) by the Holy Spirit in and through the Church.  The acts of God, the acts of Jesus Christ, the acts of the Holy Spirit.  The three-in-one. 

“Before Peter gives his first sermon in chapter 2, Luke gathers people from Jerusalem, Asia, Egypt, and Rome.  Paul preaches in the intellectual marketplace of Athens, he is driven out of the religious centre of Ephesus, and he finds hospitality on the insignificant island of Malta…. The apostle Matthias and the prophesying daughters of Phillip appear and disappear on the road as abruptly as tollbooth attendants. Rhoda and Eutychus enliven the journey with their excitement on one hand, and their sleepiness on the other. Lydia and the islanders of Malta offer hospitality sorely lacking elsewhere.  And Peter, who would seem to be a major figure in the journey, simply disappears without warning or explanation… An angel directs Philip to a deserted place during the heat of the day, where he encounters a marvelous Ethiopian eunuch who hears the gospel eagerly.  The gift of the Holy Spirit is promised to those who repent and undergo baptism, but it falls on the Gentile Cornelius, along with his family and friends, while Peter is still in the process of explaining Jesus to them.”   Phew!     

What might this book have to tell us about how to be the church?  How to be a people called out to do the work of Christ?  How to be the church in the face of moral and spiritual chaos?  How to be the church in the face of vast indifference?  How to be the church in the face of internal strife?  These are the questions that we will be asking over the coming weeks.

This morning, we’re looking at the transition scene that marks the transition from the presence of Christ Jesus with his disciples to the presence of the Holy Spirit with them.  It starts in much the same way Luke began Part 1 of his work.  “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote to you all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning…”   The other way to translate this is “all that Jesus began to do and teach.”  In other words, the work continues in Jesus’ church.  Jesus gives instructions through the Holy Spirit.  Everyone is involved here.  He spends forty days with them, speaking of the kingdom of God.  A new beginning.  We can’t hear 40 without thinking of the people of Israel being prepared to enter the land of promise over 40 years.  We can’t hear 40 without thinking of Christ preparing for his work in the wilderness for 40 days.  A time of preparation.  A whole new beginning.  Jesus is speaking of the kingdom of God.  This story did not begin with Jesus’ birth, of course.  The script had been written long before.  Promises had been made.  A new prophet like Moses, in whom would be God’s word.  A suffering servant; a man of sorrow acquainted with grief.  Hearts of stone replaced with hearts of flesh.  “A new heart I will put within you, a new spirit I will give you.”  The story is not over.  It continues in us.  This story in which we are caught up is a big deal.  It’s the biggest deal of all.  We need to be reminded of this, don’t we?  I don’t think it is opposition to this story that we face so much in our world as indifference.   We need to be reminded of its importance.  Of its big-dealedness.  All starting here with the risen Jesus. 

Jesus tells his followers to go to Jerusalem and wait.  The place where Jesus died for us.  The place where God raised him from the dead.  Then comes a most interesting command.  What is the first thing they are to do, these followers of Jesus?  We’re the ones whom God has called out.  Let’s get busy, right?  Let’s go do something.  Let’s start with a study, maybe – a survey of the neighbourhood.  There must be something to do.  Look at how Jesus tells them to start.  He tells them to wait.  Stop.

Just stop.

And wait.  A great man once said something about waiting on the Lord.  Those that wait on the Lord will renew their strength.  In an age where we feel/are told we need to be constantly doing, we are told to wait.  So how is our waiting?  I said recently that the future is by definition unknown/uncertain.  In Christ, we know who holds the future.  How is our waiting, and what role does our waiting play in us being reminded of the one on whom we depend?  There is nothing wrong with activity, of course, there isn’t.  There is nothing wrong with being able to read the signs of the times and our culture and our neighbourhoods.  We begin with waiting. 

Patience is a gift of the Holy Spirit, of course.  Someone has said this about patience:

“…patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But the patient dares to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her.” We wait patiently.  Waiting should come naturally to us.  To follow Christ is, after all, to be waiting on something.  We’re waiting on the same thing the disciples ask about in v. 6.  “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  We needn’t think of this as a misunderstanding on the disciples’ part, necessarily, or wonder how they’re not getting it after having spent 40 days with Jesus.  The restoration of Israel was promised. (Read Ezekiel 37:16-19)  This is important for people who are living under the rule of an expansionist empire.  There is a purpose to restoration.  Read Is 49:5-6.

Jesus doesn’t rebuke the disciples for their question.  They’re simply asking the wrong question.   When it comes to a timeline, it is not for us to know.  Jesus turns their focus to the situation that exists now in light of his resurrection and ascension.  The kingdom of heaven is about restoration, and Jesus’ followers are going to play a part in that restoration through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.  Restoration begins now, and God’s great restorative work is going to involve not only Israel but everywhere and indeed all of creation.  The kingdom of heaven is not about national or nationalist aspirations.  “You will be my witnesses,” says Jesus, starting in Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth.  This list of places crosses not only geographic lines (as we will hear in our story), but religious lines (Judea/Samaria), ethnic lines (the ends of the earth – the inclusion of Gentiles), and political lines (to call Jesus Lord means Caesar is not Lord and a political leader is not saviour).

The day of fulfillment will come.  The day when all things are fully restored and renewed will come.  Jesus tells them (and us) it’s not for them to know when.  Don’t get distracted by what someone has called apocalyptic enthusiasm.  The day of fulfillment will come.  We live in the already and not yet of the kingdom of God.  We live in the promises of God.  We stand on the promises of God; this is what we do.  How is it that we can trust so deeply, stand so firmly on God’s promises?  I have never been let down by any promise of God.  I have known God’s faithfulness in my life and in the lives of those around me.  My peace I give you, I do not give as the world gives, said Jesus.  I know that peace.  God’s lovingkindness is better than life, goes the song.  I’ve known that lovingkindness and know in the people of God.  You don’t need to have studied theology (not that there’s anything wrong with that; we support it) to talk about what God has done in your life.  To declare.  To witness.  

 “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses,” says Jesus.  The Holy Spirit empowerment and the mission.  This is the church, my friends.  We begin by waiting.  We begin by praying.  Together.  The next scene has Jesus’ followers devoting themselves to prayer. 

How are we doing with praying together?  What should we be praying for?  There are two things that we’ve already been speaking of in this passage.  Pray for the kingdom to come.  Even so, come Lord Jesus.  Pray for the Holy Spirit.  Pray that we might be filled with the Holy Spirit and that we might be a people who show the fruit of the Spirit of God.  Paul told the church in Ephesus that he prayed that God would give them a spirit of wisdom and revelation as they came to know him.  He prayed that they would be strengthened in their inner being with power through his Spirit, that they might be filled with all the fullness of God.

Let these things be our prayers, my dear friends.

“When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”  Here come the men in white.  When the men in white show up in Luke and Acts, it’s significant.  “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” they asked the women at the tomb.  Remember?  “He is not here, but has risen.”  Remember what he told you.  Remember what he promised.  “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”

A double warning here.  Don’t be so heavenly-minded that you’re no earthly good.  Remember that we’re not just to gaze wistfully at the departed Jesus and remember what a great man he was.  We’re called to a purpose.  We’re called to continue his work.  We’ll see what that looks like for the people of Acts over the coming weeks.  We’ll continue to figure out together and in the power of the Holy Spirit what it means for us here today.  We don’t gaze wistfully as we consider our world and the role we are called to play.  We don’t despair as we are reminded that Jesus reigns on high.  We look back, we look around us, and we look ahead.  This Jesus – the same unchanging one – will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” This same Jesus will come on a cloud to restore all things, to renew all things, to fulfill all things.  The arc of history is long, and it bends toward justice.  We’re living in the gracious interim.  May God continue to be revealed to us and through us.

Redemption is not only for the end of this story or any of our stories.  What is this redemption thing all about anyway?  We used to sing a song in church when I was young called “Redeemed.”  Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.  What does this mean exactly?  Sometimes we hear and use language that we’re used to in church that really has very little meaning for the world outside of these walls.  You don’t hear the word redemption very much.  If you’re a sports fan, you hear it.  American tennis player Amanda Anisimova loses the 2025 Wimbledon Final in straight sets.  Will she get redemption at the US Open?  Losing then winning – redemption.  She lost, but it’s just a game.  We may enjoy athletic contests and feats of athletic prowess, but let’s keep it in perspective (something I’m learning).  We talk about a person’s redeeming qualities that make up for shortcomings.  These uses of the word point us toward what we mean when we talk about God’s redeeming work; Christ’s redeeming work.  God’s redeeming work takes us from defeat to victory.  God’s redeeming work makes us God’s children – despite our shortcomings – and gives us something back that we have lost – a right relationship with God.  My redeemer lives, and I have been redeemed! Let us look at our text this morning and see what God has to say to our hearts.

The picture at the end of Ruth is a picture of peace.  It is a picture of wholeness.  In the middle of a time when everyone did what was right in their own eyes, we have a portrayal of a community in which everyone is being cared for, from the youngest to the oldest.  The story does not start there, we remember.  These are the stories of our lives, after all, and we know hw life goes.  The story of Ruth starts with famine.  It starts with want.  It starts with death.  It starts with a woman who loses not only her husband but both of her sons.  A woman who feels so completely bereft that she feels that God has turned against her.  She is so bereft that she is unable to recognize that there is someone who represents God’s hesed – God’s steadfast love, loyalty – right beside her in the person of Ruth, her daughter-in-law.  We’ve seen Ruth taking matters into her own hands, going out to the fields to ensure her own survival and that of her mother-in-law.  We’ve seen Boaz caring for the young woman, telling her that he’s heard about the steadfast love she has shown Naomi.  Boaz shows the same steadfast love and care to Ruth.  He allows her to glean in his fields and makes sure that his reapers leave plenty for her to take, inviting her to eat with them and making sure she has leftovers to take home.

We said last week that while the immediate needs of Ruth and Naomi are taken care of, the long-term security which Naomi wants for her daughter-in-law is not.  We heard at the end of last week’s episode that Boaz is a relative of Elimelech, or one with the right to redeem.  We passed over chapter 3, so here’s a quick recap.  It’s winnowing time, separating the barley from the chaff.   Naomi tells Ruth to go to Boaz at night on the threshing floor once he falls asleep.  Ruth is told to lie down and uncover Boaz’s feet, which she does.    There is some ambiguity when it comes to terminology as far as what exactly is happening, but we do know that Ruth asks a question.  She has heard Boaz say things like “The Lord be with you” and “May you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!”  As we have heard through this story, it’s often through people that God makes his lovingkindness and steadfast love known.  God invites us to show the same hesed that has been shown to us.  Ruth invites Boaz to show her the same kindness that he’s been talking about.  “Spread your cloak over your servant, for you are next-of-kin.”  The one with the right to redeem. “Marry me,” in other words. 

The Biblical concept of redemption has to do with ensuring well-being.  Someone has said that our Western concept of law focuses (in a highly individualistic way) on deterring behaviour, while Biblical law “bends toward restoring social equilibrium and well-being.”  To redeem meant to pay a price to free someone from slavery, from debt, or from loss.  To redeem, to restore, to set free in order to ensure well-being was based on the redeeming nature of God, who set free, who rescued his people from slavery in Egypt and later restored them from exile in Babylon.

Practically speaking, this looked like three things, two of which are somehow operative in our story.  When a family became poor to the point where they had to sell land to survive, the nearest male relative was responsible for buying back that land, rescuing them from poverty, and restoring the land to the family.  If a family became poor to the point where they sold themselves into slavery, a relative with means was to free them.  When a man died, leaving his widow without a child, the man’s brother was to marry the widow so that she would have children, thus carrying on the family name and ensuring the property stayed with the family.  The spirit of these laws was ongoing well-being and security, based on the God who has acted, acts and will act for our ongoing well-being and security.  Those mighty acts of freedom from Egypt and restoration from Babylon point forward to the freeing, restoring work of Jesus.

“Spread your cloak over your servant,” Ruth tells Boaz.  Let me find refuge with you. 

Boaz agrees.  Read 3:10-13

Boaz goes to the city gate. A town square type of place.  The place to see and be seen.  The place where legal matters were settled in ancient Israel.  This next-of-kin comes passing by.  We’re not told his name.  Boaz sets everything up.  “Come over, friend; sit down here.”  Boaz gathers ten elders of Bethlehem around them. 

He then brings something new into the story.  Talk of a field.  “Naomi, who has come back from the country of Moab, is selling the parcel of land that belonged to our kinsman Elimelech.  So I thought I would tell you of it and say: But it…”  The relative answers “Yes, I will redeem it.”  Boaz then tells him that there is a bit of a catch.  (It’s like when you’re buying a new car and all of a sudden they start adding on how much the undercoat/extended warranty/rust proofing is going to cost.)  “The day you acquire the field from the hand of Naomi, you are also acquiring Ruth the Moabite, the widow of the dead man…”  That foreign woman.  The woman from the place of which we Israelites are not such big fans.   Boaz is shrewd here.   He doesn’t describe Ruth  with the same words he’s used to describe her in their own private conversations.   Her worthiness.  Her devotion to her mother-in-law.  Her beautiful heart.  The hesed she has shown. He keeps all of that to himself.  “I cannot redeem it for myself without damaging my own inheritance,” is the answer from this nearer relation.  “This would make my situation too complicated,” in other words.

Just what Boaz and Ruth wanted!  

The next-of-kin takes off his sandal and makes the deal.  Boaz will redeem it as he addresses the crowd – “Today you are witnesses that I have acquired from the hand of Naomi, all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and Mahlon.  I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite, the wife of Mahlon, to be my wife, to maintain the dead man’s name on his inheritance, in order that the name of the dead may not be cut off from his kindred and from the gate of his native place; today you are my witnesses.” 

We don’t know a lot about the legalities going on here, but we know this.  Boaz did something that Naomi and Ruth could not do for themselves.  Boaz wanted to ensure not only the survival of Ruth and Naomi, but their security, their future.  We talked two weeks ago about the lovingkindness of God being reflected by Ruth when she pledged herself to her mother-in-law.  Here we have the loving kindness of God being reflected in a whole new way by Boaz.

We remember that this story is taking place in Bethlehem.  Look at how this story is pointing forward to Christ.  Boaz redeems.  Boaz buys back. Boaz restores.  Boaz ensures a future.  Christ redeems.  Christ brings us back.  Christ does something which we could not do for ourselves.  Christ restores our identity.  Christ brings new life and restores our identity as beloved children of God.

What does it mean to be redeemed?  To know redemption?  Christ brings us into the family.  Are you familiar with what we call family-style eating?  You put all the food on large plates/bowls in the centre of the table.  Everyone shares.  Everyone makes sure that everyone has enough (ideally).  People ask if anyone wants the last pork chop or whatever.   We help one another out.  Please pass the gravy, that kind of thing.  There’s no wedding banquet mentioned here, but I’m sure Ruth and Boaz had one, and I’m sure there they had a lot of food going on.  Is it any wonder that the Kingdom of God is compared to a banquet at which all are welcome?  A banquet at which “family style” takes on a whole new meaning? At this banquet, we are part of a whole new identity.  There are typically three ways to become a part of a family.  One is to be born into it.  The second is to be married into it.   A new family is created.  Is it any wonder that the Bible talks about the church as the bride and Christ as the bridegroom?  A new family has been created.  There is a third way for someone to become part of a family.  Adoption.  In ancient Israel, peace, well-being, flourishing, was tied to land; it was tied to male children to carry on your name.  When Christ came, he brought about something new.  A new situation in which our well-being, our flourishing, would be found through life in him.  A new identity in him as beloved children of God, adopted into God’s family.  Paul put it like this, writing to the Romans – “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.  For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.  When we cry, “Abba! Father!” It is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”   This is what we are.  Let us acknowledge and give thanks for this every day.  New life in the bread of life, who was born in a time called the House of Bread.

Ruth has a baby boy.  Who would have thought?  Old(er) Boaz and this Moabite widow.  We have this lovely blessing in v 14: “Blessed be the LORD, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; and may his name be renowned in Israel!  He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is worth more to you than seven sons, has borne him.” 

Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse.  She gathered the child against her chest.  Redemption is going on all over the place.  Restoration, wholeness.  It’s for everyone.  It’s lifelong.  From life’s first cry to final breath.  For little Obed.  For little Sean, Stefan and Nylah.  For young Valentina.  For Ruth Fletcher.  For…..This redemption, this bringing back, this freeing, this rescue,  this having life restored is for everyone, and it goes beyond death.  Everyone is in this together. Naomi will help raise this child because it’s not just up to the parents.  We don’t say “The old people need to get out of the way.”  We don’t say “The young people have nothing good to say.”  The end of our story shows that we all have a part in this redemption project in which we’re invited to take part.  Naomi took care of him. This is a picture of the redeemed community friends.  We’re all called and enabled by God to make his lovingkindness known. 

Obed means “servant” or “worshipper.  He’ll become the father of Jesse, who will become the father of David – “beloved.”  The king who received the promise from God that his house would last forever.  This promise was born out in Jesus.  The servant.  The beloved one.  The son of God.  The one in whom we find life restored.

Our redeemer.   In the weeks to come, may our faith community see and show itself ever more as a community of the redeemed.  Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it, the song goes.  May our proclamation of these wonderful truths sound loudly with every word - with every deed.  May we ever more be coming to know in our hearts our identity as beloved children of God.  May these things be true for us all.

The book begins “In the time of the Judges”.  The time in Israel’s history between the death of Joshua and the rise of the monarchy.  It was a time of moral and spiritual chaos; a time of danger from other people groups; a time when families were against each other; a time when tribes were against tribes.  Judges end like this, “all the people did what was right in their own eyes.”  We are all too familiar with where this gets us.  Throughout the story of Ruth, we see people being kind to one another.  There is so much attention paid to rights in our culture, and quite rightly, you may say.  What about our responsibilities to one another?  In Ruth, we see people showing above and beyond responsibility toward others.  We see a loyal daughter-in-law, a caring mother-in-law, a caring field owner and relative, people blessing babies.  We see the hand of God acting in events and the loving-kindness of God being demonstrated in people.   

As in any Bible story, it’s not so much about the people or types (loyal Ruth, kind Boaz) as it is about God.  This is not simply a moral lesson.  It’s a story of how the loving-kindness and faithfulness of God are reflected in a community in the midst of moral and spiritual chaos, along with personal uncertainty and upheaval.  At the same time, we see God’s saving purposes being advanced.  Let’s ask God to help us as we begin.

We’re very familiar in Toronto with migration.  Many of us personally.  When talking about our city to people, I always like to point out that more than half of our population was born outside of Canada.  We’re familiar with being uprooted from what is familiar.  This story starts with such an uprooting.  It begins with famine.  V1 –“…a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.  The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion, they were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah.  Without giving away the ending, we know that Bethlehem is important.  It was a big deal for Elimelich to bring his family to Moab.  Moab wasn’t traditionally seen as a very good place for the ancient Israelites.  East of the Dead Sea, they were a people who refused to help the Israelites during their wandering-in-the-wilderness years.  Moabites were outsiders.  They were “the other.”

So this family has to leave a place which is called House of Bread. “Beth” is house and “lehem” is bread.  A place in which there is no bread.  This is where our story starts. 

People read this story and try to assign all kinds of motivations to characters.  It has been said, for example, that Naomi was acting out of self-interest when she told Ruth and Orpah to go back, like she thought she’d be better off without these foreign daughters-in-law.  We can’t say, and the story doesn’t say.  We need to be careful when we try to fill in the blanks like this.  Hebrew stories don’t go into a lot of the inner life of characters.  We can say with some degree of certainty, though, that things in her life did not go the way Naomi expected.  Elimelech dies.  Her two sons take Moabite wives.  Ten years go by.  They don’t have any children.  Children in the OT signified a fulfilled life.  Sons meant security.  A continuation of the family name.  Property rights.  A good life.  Naomi might have wondered about the lack of kids.  Did she think that maybe God was punishing them for being in Moab?  Was this belief confirmed for Naomi when her two sons also died, leaving her without her two sons and her husband?  She’s alone in a strange land.  Everything she had hoped for is gone. 

You may be thinking, “There goes Pastor David being a big downer, and on Labour Day weekend too!”!  The Bible does not shy away from the reality of the human experience, and neither do we.  Why do we look at these ancient stories?  How does God speak to us in them?  The human condition is still the same.  The Bible recognizes that before creatio,n there is chaos.  Before God speaks life, darkness covered the face of the deep.  Before a return to the House of Bread, there is pain and despair.  The story begins with death and suffering. 

We get this right?  A friend of mine was telling me recently how her mother used to say, “All God’s children got problems.”  We know what this is like.  If you don’t, you will know.  Things did not go the way I expected.  We get a phone call in the middle of the night.  We get called into the boss’s office unexpectedly, and all our fears about being called into the boss’s office unexpectedly are realized.  The test results are not good. The doctor wants to see us.  We don’t get into the program we had our heart set on.  I don’t need to tell a story here because we all have our stories, just as Naomi had her story. 

Thank God, though the story doesn’t end there.  A return is possible, you see.  Look at these words in V 6 – “Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had considered his people and given them food.”  The Lord had considered his people.  Now we may think, “What does she have to lose?”  There’s nothing left for her in Moab, after all.

Except… except for these two daughters-in-law who set out with her.  We don’t know if this was usual cultural practice in ancient Moab or not.  When they get to the outskirts of town or wherever it was they got, Naomi tells Ruth and Orpah to go back.  Naomi sees no hope for herself.  She’s too old to have a husband.  Even if she miraculously found one, she’s too old to have sons to take the place of Mahlon and Chilion for the two women.  “There’s still hope for you,” she tells them, but “the hand of the Lord has turned against me.”  Have you ever felt this way?  Have you ever felt that God was punishing you for something?  Or wondered what you had done to deserve this?  Felt that God was against you?  People are told this kind of thing, you know.  We need to be getting this right, friends.  A friend of mine was told that the death of her husband was the result of her not following her religion properly.  It’s crazy what people are told.  It’s damaging.  Naomi is feeling that God is against her.

She’s going to be reminded that the situation is not quite the way it seems to her, however.  There’s a great line in Psalm 56:9.  I like it especially, considering how much I go on about what we don’t know.  “This I know, that God is for me.”  God is for you.  God is for me.  God puts people around us to remind us that God is for us.  Ruth is beside Naomi to remind her of this truth.  Naomi is feeling without hope, alone, bereft. 

Ruth is about to remind her that there is something that not even death can separate us from.  God’s love.  God’s hesed.  This wonderful Hebrew work, to describe God.  It’s part of God’s nature.  Part of who God is. Hesed.  There’s no one word that does justice to it in English.  We say “loving kindness.”  We say “steadfast love.”  Whenever you see those words in our NRSV Bibles, chances are it’s this Hebrew word hesed.   Naomi mentions it first when she says in V 8, “May the Lord deal kindly (hesed) with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.” 

Ruth is about to be a living reminder that God deals hesed with us.  Orpah returns home.  We’re not to judge Orpah here.  The narrator doesn’t judge, and neither should we.  Going home might be an expected custom that Orpah is following. It’s not simply “Don’t be an Orpah, be a Ruth” or “Every daughter-in-law should show unswerving loyalty to their mother-in-law in every circumstance.”  Ruth makes the decision to show steadfast love and loving-kindness to her mother-in-law.  Hesed is shown by others in the story, too (as we will see) because we’re all called to reflect it.  Ruth is throwing her lot in with Naomi and with YAHWEH, whose name she invokes in her vow. 

We all have a decision to make about trusting God – our desire to trust God or trust God more.  The image of a journey is a good one to describe our lives.  Ruth has reached a cross- road.  Important things happen at crossroads.  Life-changing directions.   We have a decision to make.  The prophet Jeremiah put it like this – “Thus says the lord, Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, Where the good way lies, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” (Jer 6:16)  We don’t know what Ruth understands about YAHWEH, but she knows something about hesed.  She tells Naomi that she is throwing her lot in with her mother-in-law and with God.  Look at how the terms of the vow get stronger and stronger, starting with “going” –  V16-17 “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you!  Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.  Where you die, I will die – there I will be buried.  May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you.”  That is beautiful.  People say this at weddings even (without the “Do not press me to leave you” line).

What is Ruth doing here?  Ruth is making a declaration that all hope is not lost.  She’s reminding Naomi (and us) that it is in Yahweh’s steadfast love/lovingkindness that life is to be found.  In our going, in our staying, in our trusting, in our living, in our dying.  Ruth is saying, in effect, “I am for you, I am with you, no matter what.”

Not even death will separate me from you.  Does this remind us of anyone we know?  Look for this throughout the story – truths of God being demonstrated in the lives of these people.  Ruth is speaking some truth here.  Some very good truth. 

Naomi doesn’t seem to take it that well.  V 18 “When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.”  It’s almost as if Naomi has forgotten about her daughter-in-law.  This couldn’t have been a comfortable trip.  “Awkward”, as the kids say.  All this silence.  When they get back to Bethlehem, the whole town is stirred.  Is this Naomi?  She looks kind of familiar.  Who is that young woman with her?  Naomi speaks again – V 20 “Call me no longer Naomi, call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.  I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty; why call me Naomi when the Lord has dealt harshly with me, and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”  Naomi is speaking a lament.  Unfortunately, she’s not lamenting to God here, but rather about God.  It’s Ok, though.  God is on Naomi’s side.  She will know this by the time the story ends.

For now, though, she’s alone – she’s returned empty.  The thing is, of course, that she hasn’t returned empty.  Remember who’s standing beside her.  I can picture Ruth going, “Hello – I’m right here! You know I can hear you, right?” as Naomi goes on about how empty she is.

Ruth has made a vow, you see.  Where you go, I will go, where you lodge, I will lodge….  I’m with you, in other words.  You have me.  There’s a new situation along with a new woman in town.  Vows aren’t just to declare things, you see.  Vows are performative.  To speak them is to do them.  They create a new situation.  I’m officiating a wedding today at which vows will be spoken.  We welcomed new members into Blythwood not long ago and made vows and promises to one another.  The words of a vow call into being something new.  A new family.  Ruth has made a covenant with Naomi – a loving agreement born out of hesed – out of the steadfast love and lovingkindness of God. 

Naomi doesn’t know it yet, but this will change things.  They’re back in Bethlehem.  Our chapter ends like this – V 22 “They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.”  I said at the beginning that Bethlehem means House of Bread.  Lehem is bread.  It sounds a lot like l’chaim – the word for life.  Do you know what they use to make bread?  Barley.  Bread is life.  We know the one who called himself the Bread of Life.  Oh, and he was from Bethlehem, too.  Isn’t it great how that all comes together?  The Bread of Life made a New Covenant – a new loving agreement based on the lovingkindness of God, Father, Son, and Spirit.  This story began with famine and death.  It won’t end there.  Thanks be to God that it ends in life.  So does our story in Christ.  Stand at the crossroads and ask for the ancient path, where the good way lies and walk in it – let’s walk in it together – and find rest for our souls.

Thanks be to God for His precious gift.

We have said throughout these weeks that the signs that Jesus performs, important though they are to the people involved, are signifiers.  They signify or point toward who Jesus is and what it means to know life in him.  Why?  John tells it plainly:

   ³⁰ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹ But these are written so that you may come to believe^[a] that Jesus is the Messiah,^[b] the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

We said at the beginning of the series that Jesus deals with the everyday in these signs – celebrations, need, sickness, food, weather, disability.  Death.  The final experience common to us all.  The great unknown.  Of course as we said last week, with Jesus it’s maybe not so much about what you know but who you know.  In him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  In him, death does not have the final say.

Even while we look at a story of death and life, we must acknowledge and be firm in the truth that life in Jesus is not simply for an after-life.  I’m watching a show called “After Life” right now.  Ricky Gervais plays a widower who is not doing well dealing with the death of his wife from cancer.  He’s dismissive of faith, seeing it simply as a false way to help people deal with the death of their loved ones.  At one point he says something like “If there’s nothing beyond this life, we can act like every meal, every kiss, every goodbye, could be the last one, and make the most of them, appreciate them.” 

Here's the thing about life in Christ though.   Eternal life is not simply something to enjoy when we die while we muddle through the mess here.  Remember how Jesus described eternal life when he prayed to his Father – “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”  Knowing God, living in Christ, Christ in you the hope of glory, changes everything.   Seeing every breath as a gift from God and being thankful for each moment changes us.  Seeing every person (coming to see because we’re not complete in this) as made in the image of God and beloved by God changes us.  Seeing every created being and thing as created and called “good” by God gives us a kinship with everything. 

Knowing Jesus as the resurrection and the life changes everything, including death.  Listen to this from English theologian David Ford:

The ongoing community is being taught how to respond in faith, through trusting in Jesus as “the resurrection and the life,” to the continuing reality of death and grief.  This is facing one of the great problems of those who believe in a life-giving God of love who yet lets people die. The thrust of this chapter’s response to that problem is to face the harsh facts of illness, death, and decomposition, and do justice to the realities of loss, grief, and anger, while trusting that they do not have the last word. The relationship with the living Jesus in love and trust is more fundamental and embracing. Living in that trust and love can begin now, and the relationship with Jesus is not destroyed by physical death. Jesus himself does not avoid grief, danger, suffering, and death, but offers a life that has come through them and sustains others through them.

Let’s get to the story. Three siblings.  Mary.  Martha.  Lazarus.  The sisters send a message to Jesus in their trouble.  “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”  What a good way to bring our troubles to God when those that we love are ill.  “Lord, my brother whom you love is ill.”  “Lord, my parent who you love is ill.”  “Lord, my sister whom you love is ill.”  “Lord, my child whom you love is ill.”  Augustine, the North African bishop said of this message:

They did not say, “Come” . . . , but only, “Lord, behold, he whom you love is ill” — as if to say: It is enough that you know. For you are not one that loves and then abandons.

“This illness does not lead to death,” says Jesus, “Rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”  We can say the very same thing about Jesus’ death, which comes about because of this story.  It’s after Lazarus is raised that Jesus’ execution becomes the plan (11:53)  Of course Jesus’ execution is not the end of the story, any more than Lazarus’ death in Jesus' absence is the end of his story.  We have Jesus deciding to go to Bethany despite the danger he is facing.  Jesus is not going to forsake his friend.  We have a misunderstanding once again when Jesus says that Lazarus is asleep.  The disciples take him literally.  “If Lazarus is sleeping this is good no?  Sleep’s often just what we need when we’re sick!”  We have Jesus telling them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.”  We have Thomas.  This is good for Thomas.  We can’t read Thomas’ tone here.  We don’t know if it’s steely resolve or a hands-thrown-in-the-air resignation.  Look at what he says though, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”  Let us go with him.  Keep going with him, though we know not what lies ahead.  We know the one with whom we go.

Jesus arrived and found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Martha goes out to meet him with her “if only.”  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”  Martha brings her “if only” to Jesus in faith.  This is honest.  We understand this.  We understand the sadness of “if only.”  If only he hadn’t taken that route.  If only this had been diagnosed earlier.  If only I had worked harder/studied harder.  If only I had known...  Both Martha and her sister Mary are honest with Jesus.  We can be honest with God.  Let us bring our “if only’s” to God.  In the same way, the Psalmist brings “How long O Lord” to God.  God can handle our complaining about timing or anything else.  The deeper significance is that we are coming to God.  Martha and Mary remain devoted to Jesus, who, we have been reminded, loves them.  In tragedy or situations in which we wonder why, we need especially to be reminded of God’s love.

If only I had… If only I hadn’t…  “If only you had been here…”  “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” (11:22).  Even now.  Author James Baldwin once wrote, “The Lord never seems to get there when you want him, but when he arrives, he’s always right on time.”  Even now.  Martha brings her “if only” to Jesus.  Jesus talks about the future.  “Your brother will rise again.”  Martha answers, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”  “I know that,” says Martha, and it seems to be not a terribly comforting thought in her acute grief.  I understand this.  When my father died, I remember people asking me how I was doing.  I was a little bit cliched, saying things that we are expected to say.  “I’m doing fine,” I would say, “I know I’ll see him again.” In actual fact, I wasn’t doing very well with it and really should have been more honest about that.  We learn, though.  I remember a friend saying to me, “You don’t have to put a bow on it,” and he was right.  While we who are in Christ don’t grieve as people with no hope, we grieve.

Into the middle of this comes Jesus’ pronouncement and Jesus’ promise.  Resurrection, rising again, new life, is not just something we believe in.  It’s not some vague idea about some sort of life after death.  It’s a person.  He’s standing in front of Martha.  In the Spirit of God, he’s standing with us today.  Resurrection, new life, is a person who brings the future promise right into our present and right into the middle of all our “if only’s.”  “I am the resurrection and the life (again the promise of life abundant – life lived in communion with the divine – in communion with God).”  And then the promise – “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who believes in me will never die.”

NT Wright, in his commentary on John, puts it like this – “He is challenging her, urging her, to exchange her ‘if only…’ for an ‘if Jesus…’ If Jesus is who she is coming to believe he is…If Jesus is the Messiah, the one who was promised by the prophets, the one who was to come into the world…If he is God’s own son, the whom in whom the living God is strangely and newly present… If he is the resurrection-in-person, life-come-to-life…”

If Jesus is life who has come to bring life, life who comes to bring life, life who will come to bring life…  Then how should we respond to him?

Whether it is for the first time, the first time in a while, or the 1,000^th time, Jesus is the truth to which we’re invited to respond.  We’re talking about knowing the one who calls himself the resurrection and the life.  Resurrection life – rising again life – is not simply something we look forward to, but something we take part in and share now.  To be “in Christ” and for Christ to be “in us” means that the one who is the resurrection and the life is in us as we are in him.  It is the life of the ages, eternal life that begins now and that even physical death cannot bring to an end.     

Christ in us, the hope of glory.  What a marvellous mystery.  How beyond our ability to grasp.  At the same time, it’s something the youngest among us can understand.  Christ in me.  I myself in Christ.  The resurrection and the life in me.  Now.  Always.  Do you believe this?  I believe it.

Do you believe it?  This is Jesus’ question now.  “Do you believe this?”  Do you entrust yourself to him?  Do you listen, worship, rest in him?  “Do you trust me?” asks Jesus.  It’s a very personal matter.  We’re not talking in generalities at this point or merely philosophizing.  The question is before us if we’re hearing it right now.  The question is not “Do you believe in some sort of vague idea of life after death or that there is something beyond this life?” but “Do I trust that Jesus means what he says?”  In one of the great statements of faith, Martha answers, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ – the anointed one, the chosen one – the Son of God, the one who came into the world, comes into the world and will come into the world.

In a little while, Jesus is going to cry with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”  The sign itself happens in two verses:

43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

Jesus meets death head-on.  An immovable object meets an irresistible force.  Death is swallowed up in victory.  “Lazarus, come out!” Jesus cries with a loud voice.  The dead man comes out.  “Unbind him and let him go,” Jesus tells the crowd, because we need help from one another in this new life.

It’s the invitation to new life.  Not the resurrection life which is to come, because Lazarus will live out his days after all and die a physical death at the end of them.  New life in Christ began that day for Lazarus, which would be marked by a life lived in the presence of Jesus.  Look at 12:1 – “Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, who he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served (typical Martha!), and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.”  The invitation is to new life.  The invitation is to take our seat at the table with Jesus.  May this be an invitation we each take up daily, and may this be true for us all. Amen.

The second “I am” statement, “I am the light of the world”, and the sixth sign (a man born blind receives sight) come together in this wonderful story (in which a lot of things are coming together) and in this wonderful image of Jesus as light, as illumination, as revealing, as life.  We remember how John started off – “In him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”  In Jesus, life is light, and light is life.  We remember how God’s story began – “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, and God saw that the light was good.”

“I am the light of the world,” proclaims Jesus right before our story.  What a wonderful image, even in these long days of summer.  Light a candle.  The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.  (Is. 9:2).  Shine a light.  “You are the light of the world.  A city built on a hill cannot be hidden.” (Matt 5:14)  I saw the light! “Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.” (Acts 9:3)  I once was lost but now am found/Was blind, but now I see.  “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.   Live as children of light.” (Eph 5:8)  Walk in the light.  “But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7)

All summer, we’ve seen how these signs of Jesus invite us into trust in him.  To acknowledge Jesus as the light of the world is to acknowledge our need for his light. If we say we see just fine, we have no need of Jesus. To say “Lord, I believe,” along with the man in our story, is to acknowledge our need for the light of Jesus.  As someone has said, “Who would claim to lead lives of perfect light, truth, wisdom, holiness, patience, self-giving, and love for all?”  To acknowledge Jesus as light is to acknowledge the darkness that exists in the world, in cities, in communities, in families, in ourselves.  I’m talking about enmity, hatred, vengeance, inward focus, greed, fear, apathy,  fractured relationships. 

Jesus and his disciples come across an individual.. “As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.  His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’  Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

The disciples are reflecting a belief (popular at the time and still popular in many circles) that when it comes to sin, what goes around comes around.  You could draw a direct line of causality from suffering to sin, whether it’s the person’s or their parents.  It’s a karmic sort of idea. We all know about karma.  The idea that the good you do will come back to you, and the bad that you will do will also come back to you.  Good karma.  Bad karma.  Things are said about what karma is that I can’t repeat here.  We get what we deserve, good or bad.  We can go to creditkarma.com to track the credit rating we deserve, and the world is a moral vending machine in which we are rewarded for what we put in.

This is my issue with the idea of karma.  I get it.  I get that we want to be able to explain why things happen – both bad and good.  I know that karma is often discussed in terms of the good that can come back to one and is often used as a motivator for moral action. 

The problem that I have with karma is that it would explain bad things as being a result of bad things that you have done in this life or in a past life.  I don’t see the universe as that simple, and it seems like a bit of a monstrous thing to suggest to someone that they are inexplicably suffering because of something bad that they have done.  The world is one crazy, mixed-up place, and we are right to be skeptical of those who offer easy explanations.  The Bible never shies away from dealing with the reality in which we live.  It’s a world where, for example, people are born blind.

“He was born blind,” Jesus says, “So that God’s works might be revealed in him.”  One way of hearing Jesus’ words here is that they speak of a universal truth to what Jesus is saying here.  In our fallenness, humanity is born spiritually blind, and we have a part to play in working God’s works.  What are God’s works?  I’m glad you asked.  John 6:28-29 – “Then they said to him, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he has sent.’”  Belief.  Trust in Jesus will be revealed in this man.

In terms of what God works, let us pay attention to what is happening here in the story.  Jesus notices those who are suffering.  Jesus is drawn to those who are suffering.  Jesus comes alongside those who are suffering.  In the face of suffering, Jesus speaks and acts.  In the face of the pre-creation formless void and darkness in Genesis 1, God does not enter into a discussion as to where this void came from or why this darkness is here.  God speaks and acts creatively and decisively.  Jesus speaks and acts creatively and decisively.  “’ As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, ‘Go wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent).  Then he went and washed and came back able to see.” (9:5-7)

Jesus goes about his Father’s work, and he goes about doing what his Father does.  He goes about setting things right. God is making things right.  God will one day make all things right.  Suffering is not a problem for us to solve.  That doesn’t mean that we’re not called to come alongside suffering.  It doesn’t mean we are called to turn our faces away from it or not seek to help and comfort.  What are the questions that we should be asking in the face of suffering?  Someone has put it like this, “God, what are you doing in all of this, and how can I join you in it? What are you saying, and how can I hear you better? What are the works of God waiting to be revealed in me and in each of us?”

In the midst of suffering, God takes creative and decisive action.  We are post-Easter people. We are resurrection people. We remember those words about Jesus, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” 

Our invitation is to walk in the light of the world.  To listen to him.  This blind man didn’t understand everything, and neither do we.  He listens to Jesus, and he acts.  This man becomes another in a line of people in John’s Gospel who respond to Jesus in a right and good and fitting and proper way.  We remember the words of Jesus’ mother, “Do whatever he tells you.” (2:5)  The man did what Jesus told him.  Let us hear Jesus’ words echoing and resonating. Jesus’ words like “Believe in God.  Believe also in me.”  “Abide in me, as I abide in you.”  “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”  “Love one another as I have loved you.” 

Listen to him.  Do whatever he tells you.  Do walk in the light of the light of the world is to join with God in God’s saving work. Not that we save anyone, but God invites us to participate in God’s saving work by making God’s ways known.  “I must work the works of him who sent me” is the line (9:4).  “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (9:5)  “You are the light of the world,” Jesus says at another point. (Matt 5:14) To follow this Jesus – to be in Christ – means that we are illuminated to be illuminating through Christ’s creative saving light-giving sight-causing work.  To be sent daily.  Enabled to be light – to be a reflector of the love and light of God so that it’s bouncing off us onto others in what we do and what we say.

Encountering Jesus changes us.  It might make us unrecognizable.  Have you known this?  “Isn’t this the man that use to sit and beg?”  “It is!” “No, but it’s someone like him.”  The man begins to testify, which simply means he begins to tell his story.  He tells his story as his understanding of what has happened to him in his encounter with Jesus grows.  He’s telling his story throughout this chapter very plainly and very simply.  “I am the man,” he tells the crowd.  “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.’  Then I went and washed and received my sight.’”  They said to him, ‘Where is he?’  He said, ‘I do not know.’”  How could he know?  He doesn’t even know what Jesus looks like at this point! 

Darkness is an ongoing reality.  Opposition to God is ongoing.  There is opposition to the Light in our story.  There is opposition from established religion.  Pharisees.  The miracle happened on the Sabbath.  You are not supposed to knead on the Sabbath, and this would include making mud.  The Pharisees know, therefore, that this man Jesus cannot be from God (although it must be noted that some of their number said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” and they were divided).  There’s hope even for the Pharisee.  In the middle of their division, they ask the formerly blind man, “What do you say about him?  It was your eyes he opened.”  The man replies, “He is a prophet.”  He is one chosen to say and do God’s words and God’s will in the world.  After speaking with the blind man’s parents, the Pharisees go to him again.  There are things that they know.  They know that this man Jesus is a sinner. (24).  They know that this man was born entirely in sin (29).  Why else would he have been blind after all? We need to be careful about what we claim to know.  I do not claim to know that anyone is beyond the reach of God’s mercy.  I do not claim to know who is on the inside and who is on the outside.    If we’ve been following Christ for any length of time, we know that some of the beliefs and practices that we have held have been challenged and changed.  Following Christ is not about blind conformity to a religious tradition.  When we prayerfully and with love for one another consider questions about who should be welcomed, accepted into membership, ordained in leadership, we should be open to being corrected.  There is so much I don’t know.  There is so much I could never explain.  We sing about it.  I know not why God’s wondrous grace to me he has made known.  I know not how the Spirit moves, convincing us of sin.  I know not when my Lord may come.  We hear in God’s word about it, “For I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him.” (2 Tim 1:12)  I am not ashamed of this. I was blind and now I see, you see.  I entrust my life to him.  In one of my favourite lines in John’s Gospel, speaking of Jesus, the man replies, “I do not know whether he is a sinner.  One thing I do know is that though I was blind, now I see.” In the face of a lot of oppositional questioning, the man displays a calm confidence.  I love that.   

I was thinking I wish we knew this man’s name so I could call him by it, rather than “the blind man” or “the formerly blind man.”  There can be meaning in someone not being named in the Bible.  We can put ourselves in his place.  Jesus finds him after he has been driven out by the religious authorities.  Jesus asks, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”  The man, ever truthful, says, “And who is he, sir?  Tell me so that I may believe in him.  Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking to you is he.”  Have you seen him?  Have you heard him?  Listen to the response, “Lord, I believe.”  And he worshiped him.

As we are sent, let us remember that we are sent.  The man was given sight at a place called “Sent”.  “The light of the world,” we say as we light a candle.  It’s a powerful image, carrying the light of Christ.  We ourselves are not the light, but we’re sent to testify to the light; to testify to the love, grace, mercy, compassion, justice of Jesus in all our words and acts.  Let’s imagine we’re bearing the light of Christ like a candle always, asking for the Spirit’s help that we may see everyone and everything ever more clearly in the light of Christ’s love.

Amen   

Why the language lesson?  These words that Jesus speaks to his disciples go back to a conversation Moses has with God in Exodus 3, which provides the inspiration for my whole “It was what it was, it will be what it will be” thing.  Moses is in a conversation with God at a bush that is on fire and not consumed.  God is calling Moses to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt.  Here’s part of the conversation:

But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’  what shall I say to them?”

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”  He said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’  God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and this is my title for all generations.”  (Ex 3:13-15.

I am who I am.  I will be what I will be.  “I AM has sent you.”  Jesus in John 6 as he walks toward his disciples on the water - “I, I am.”  Do not be afraid.   Two weeks ago, we heard Jesus speak about the unity between himself and the Father.  Today, Jesus claims the divine name.  This is the fifth of seven signs in John’s Gospel, and it has been well established that the signs carry a significance beyond the signs.  This is not just about walking on water, though there is meaning to walking on water.  This is not just about the secondary miracle here – the boat immediately reaching land (a kind of divine teleportation), though that has meaning too.  We are looking to and listening to the One toward whom the signs point through these weeks.  That we might come to trust him more.  That we might come to know him more.  “I AM,” says God.  “I AM,” says Jesus.  We do well to ask the question, “Who are you, Lord?”  The story of the exodus is all over John 6, with the talk of manna and of a way being made through water.  In Exodus 33, Moses is again in conversation with God.  Listen to what he says, “Now if I have found favour in your sight, show me your ways, so that I may know you…” (Ex 33:13a)  This is a good prayer!  “Show me your ways, so that I may know you.”  “Who are you, Lord?” is what Paul asked the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. (Acts 9:5)  Don’t we want to know Christ?  “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his suffering,s” Paul wrote to the church in Philippi. 

This sign is for the church, in particular.  This sign is the only one of the seven that happens in front of the disciples alone.  This one is for followers of Christ.  If you’re not following Christ and you’re hearing this, I implore you to stay with us to hear about what Jesus is like.  There will be an invitation for all of us at the end.  We remember last week the miraculous feeding of at least 5,000 people.  We remember that the crowd wanted to come and take Jesus by force to make him king, but he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.  Jesus is not someone for us to put our own concepts of God on.  Jesus is not someone to be used for our own purposes, be they personal, corporate, socio-economic, or political. 

“When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum.  It was not dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.  The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing.” (6:16-18)  The sign is about Jesus, but his followers are in the story too.  We are in the story too.  Note what’s going on here.  There’s no danger of the boat being swamped as in other Jesus-calms-the-storm stories.  But it’s dark.  Jesus is not physically with them.  The sea is rough.  The wind is against them.  It’s dark.  This is not 5,000-plus people getting lots of bread and fish and good times all around.  This is hard.  It’s a grind, rowing in the middle of a lake in the dark. Things are unknown.  Things are uncertain.  They are three to four miles out on a lake, which is seven miles across at its widest point.

They saw Jesus. 

“When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified.” (6:19)  It’s interesting that the thing that makes the disciples afraid is seeing Jesus.  When God (or messengers of God) appear in God’s story, this is often the reaction.  It’s a good reminder, I think, that we mustn’t try to tame Jesus.  Jesus is not simply the figurine winking at me and giving me the thumbs up from my dashboard.  Jesus is not simply someone with whom I have an understanding.  Jesus is my friend.  Jesus calls me his brother.  Jesus is also the great unchangeable I am who I am/I will be who I will be (praise God and give him glory great things he has done).

Jesus is walking on the Sea of Galilee (aka Sea of Tiberias).  He has no need to say anything to the wind or rough seas here.  Jesus is showing divine mastery over the wind and the waves.  Jesus is God, “who alone stretches out the heavens and trampled the waves of the Sea.” (Job 9:8)  This is the God who makes a way when there is no way.  “It is I (I, I am); do not be afraid.”  Jesus is fully and completely identifying himself with the God who makes a delivers/saves/brings us back to Him.  Listen to these verses from Isaiah 51 – “Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to cross over?” (Is 51:10)  Then “I, I am he who comforts you…” (Is 51:12a)   

It is I, do not be afraid.  I am, do not be afraid.  “Before Abraham was born, I AM,” Jesus will say in chapter 8.  The great I AM comes to us.  What shall I fear?  The great I AM comes to us.  Of whom shall I be afraid?  Jesus comes striding on the water and how could we not think of John’s opening words, which are just resonating like crazy here – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  Through him all things came into being, and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”  Of whom then shall I be afraid?

Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.  There’s a secondary miracle here that transcends the usual laws of space and time.  They reach the other side immediately.  There’s a truth here about life in Christ that we should note here.  Life in Jesus is two seemingly opposite truths which we hold together.  While we are on our way, we have also reached our destination.  Trust in Jesus is our spiritual destination.  To trust Jesus is to know in part what it means to be at home with him. 

One of the wonderful things about being at home is gathering around a table to share a meal.  We heard Jesus proclaim himself the bread of life last week.  We said that coming to his table is a continual altar call; a continual call to conversion and transformation and being made new.  The disciples react in the best possible way here at the end of our story.  “Then they wanted to take him into the boat.”  This word that’s been translated “take” is the same word that’s translated receive in John 1.  Same word.  Take.  Receive.  It’s used by John to signify faith in Jesus.  Trust in Jesus.  It keeps coming back to John 1!  “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God…” (1:12)  Then they wanted to receive him into the boat.  We may have been trusting Jesus for quite some time.  We may be saying for the first time, “I want to receive you, Jesus.  I want to trust you.”  Someone has said wanting to believe is a form of believing, too.  Let us come to the table and say, “I, too, receive you, the great I AM.  My deliverer.  God with us.  Our guide.  The One who is bringing us home and assuring us we are at home as we go.”     

May we all receive him this way this day, and every day.  Amen

Psalm 77: 23-32

Some went down to the sea in ships,     doing business on the mighty waters; ²⁴ they saw the deeds of the Lord,     his wondrous works in the deep. ²⁵ For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,     which lifted up the waves of the sea. ²⁶ They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths;     their courage melted away in their calamity; ²⁷ they reeled and staggered like drunkards,     and were at their wits’ end. ²⁸ Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,     and he brought them out from their distress; ²⁹ he made the storm be still,     and the waves of the sea were hushed. ³⁰ Then they were glad because they had quiet,     and he brought them to their desired haven. ³¹ Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,     for his wonderful works to humankind. ³² Let them extol him in the congregation of the people,     and praise him in the assembly of the elders.

We have said that the seven signs deal in everyday matters of life.  Provision at a party.  Illness.  Disability (inability to walk/see).  Bread (and fish, because, protein).  Stormy weather (literal and figurative) next week.  Death and life.

We have said that the signs point to something beyond themselves.  Not that the signs are insignificant – they’re wonderful!  They point, however, to something even more wonderful.  They have a significance beyond themselves.

And really, don’t we all want to have a significance beyond ourselves?  Don’t we all want to know what it means to really live?  Not only know but be ever more coming to know in our hearts what it really means to live?  No matter our circumstances or what stage of life we’re in.

“I am the bread of life,” says Jesus.

I remember my father once talking about how people can say, “Jesus is a crutch.”  This is the type of thing that may be said by people who oppose Jesus or are seeking to explain their rejection of/ignoring of Jesus.  He’s just a crutch.  I don’t need it.  As far as this argument goes, my father rejected it as being based on a false premise – namely, Jesus as a crutch.  Jesus never said “I am the crutch of life” for good reason.  A crutch implies something that is temporary; needed only when one is injured or recovering from an injury.  I’m very much my father’s son when it comes to rejecting false premises and making sure that our premises are sound.

So here’s the premise, and we’re really getting to the heart of the matter right at the beginning.  Jesus is the bread of life.  Jesus is the person necessary for life lived the way that human beings have been created by God to live.  False premises are all around us.  I was reading something this week (in the context of a video game I play on my phone, of all places) where something began a rather lengthy argument on free speech with this statement – “If we all agree in the right to be left alone…”  Right away, I thought, “Whoever said we have the inherent right to be left alone?”  This is where I stand in Christ alone.  This doesn’t mean that I’m alone, but that this truth is found in Christ alone- the one and only.  We have been created to live in a loving relationship/union/communion with God through the birth/life/death/resurrection/ascension/promised return of the Word of Life.  This is what we have been made for.  Anything else is vanity.  A chasing after wind.  To believe that human beings were not made to depend or rely on something outside themselves is to believe in the falsehood of so-called rugged individualism. 

I need Jesus like I need bread to live.  Jesus gives me life abundant as I depend on him and trust in him.

“I am the bread of life,” says Jesus.  The 1^st “I am” statement comes on the heels of this story of miraculous feeding.  Bread and fish.  We’ve heard of Jesus providing wine at a wedding party and spoke of abundant grace.  We’ve heard about Jesus speaking recovery for a boy who was at the point of death.  Jesus’ words (“Go, your son shall live.”) were trusted by that royal official as soon as he spoke them.  “You say it, I trust it,” we said. We heard about a man paralyzed for 38 years being made able to walk.  We heard Jesus speaking for the 1^st time in John’s Gospel about the unity, the interdependence, the reliance, the love between him and the Father.  We have been made to live in that unity and interdependence and reliance and love.   So – “After this, Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Tiberias.  A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick.  Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples.”  While the signs point beyond themselves, there is significance in the signs.  “When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”  He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do.” (6:5-6)  In our lives, Jesus will give us opportunities to show our trust.  It’s amazing to think that we might even delight and amaze Jesus by the trust that we show in him.  Remember the centurion who said to Jesus, “You just say the word and I know it will happen.”  Jesus was amazed.  I’d like for us to amaze Jesus by our trust.  Philip does not do so well here, and neither do we at times.  He’s just looking at the problem. “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.”  He’s looking at the problem rather than looking at Jesus saying, “We know you’ve got this Lord, just like at that wedding!”  I know you’ve got this, Lord, just like you’ve had so much in my life to bring me thus far. 

Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish.  But what are they among so many people?”  Andrew does a little better.  His trust is little, but he’s bringing what’s available to Jesus – this boy with his lunch.  Famous story told in all four Gospels.  His faith is small, but he and the boy come to Jesus with at least some measure of trust in Jesus being able to do far more than we could ever ask or imagine – and that we might play some part in it, however seemingly small that part may be.  Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.”  Jesus’ followers are involved in the organization here.  Get things organized, says Jesus.  Sometimes this might be as simple as setting up a space for people to sit down and eat, sit down and hear.  “Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.  When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’  So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets.  When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’” (6:11-14)

“I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people,” was the promise God gave through Moses.  “I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything I command.” (Deut 18:18)  Deliverance is at hand.  Deliverance is not going to come through people appropriating Jesus for their own purposes – be they personal or political.  “When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” (6:15)  Seizing Jesus for political purposes is not going to bring about deliverance. It’s going to do damage.  Deliverance is going to come by God giving of himself in grace upon grace. 

“I am the bread of life,” says Jesus.  What are we to do then?  Listen to Him.  “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.  For it is on him that the Father has set his seal.” (6:27)  The answer comes back from the crowd, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” (6:28)  Jesus answers, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (6:29)  Belief not simply as intellectual assent.  Belief as seeing, hearing, remembering, praising. Belief as devotion to, entrusting one’s life to.  Belief as our desire to abide in, live in, rest in, and hunger for.  Hunger for the bread of God, which comes down from heaven and is freely offered, giving life to the world.

We’re talking about real life.  In this is life.  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  In this is love and light and life.  That thing for which we hunger.  That thing which we seek in all kinds of different places.  That thing which we are called here to make the foundational underpinning truth in our life.  I’m saying that thing, but I should be saying that person.  That bread.  That bread of life. The one in whom we have a life now.  The one who promises to raise those who believe in him up on the last day.  “Give us this bread always,” says the crowd.  It’s good to know what you want.  They’re still talking about actual bread at this point this is a good prayer to make.  “Lord, give us this bread always.”  It’s good to know what we want.  This was Jesus’ question to people so often, wasn’t it?  What are you looking for?  Whom are you looking for?  What do you want me to do for you?  “Give us this bread always,” Lord.

Abundant life is the promise.  It’s not about how much stuff we have or money we have.  Abundant life is represented here by barley loaves (not even fancier wheat loaves) and fish.  Someone has said this about this story: “We are reminded once again that abundant life can be as simple as the basic necessities to sustain life. It is abundance reconfigured through the concept of relationship. Life cannot be abundant if it is not grounded in intimacy and relationship, and security.”    “I am the bread of life,” says Jesus.  Let “Give us this bread always,” always be our reply, living lives that are turned toward him.  What does this look like? It looks like our worship of God together.  It looks like our listening to God in God’s word.  It looks like our prayers of praise and thanks and help.  It looks like sharing meals with one another.  It looks like doing what we can to make sure people are not going hungry. 

Living a life turned toward Jesus looks like accepting the invitation to come to His table.  We’re going to do that next week, and may the coming days be a time of preparation for us.  Someone has described us coming to Jesus’ table as a repeated altar call to conversion that is ongoing, a fresh committing of ourselves and entrusting ourselves to the Bread of Life, on whom we depend.  Can’t stop.  Won’t stop.  Rowan Williams, Welsh, Anglican bishop/theologian, former Archbishop of Canterbury, described the church in this way:

“Here we are then… the people who have not found the nerve to walk away.  And that is perhaps the best definition we could have of the Church.  We are the people who have not had the nerve to walk away; who have not had the nerve to say in the face of Jesus, “All right, I’m healthy.  I’m not hungry.  I’ve finished.  I’ve done.”  We’re here as hungry people, we are here because we cannot heal and complete ourselves; we’re here to eat together at the table of the Lord, as he sits at dinner in this house, and is surrounded by these disreputable, unfinished, unhealthy, hungry, sinful, but at the end of the day almost honest people, gathered with him to find renewal, to be converted, and to change.”

May we be among that number, and may this be true for all of us.

Amen

Do you want to be made well?

There is no joyful response on the part of the man who can now walk after a lifetime of not being able to walk.  There is no walking and leaping and praising God here.  There is no overt response of faith, even, apart from the fact that he went to the temple afterward.  A good place to be.  There is no “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief here.”  The man doesn’t even know who it is that healed him until Jesus finds him later in the temple. 

What is going on here?  We said last week that these sign stories that John gives us in his Gospel (significant and miraculous though they are) point to the truth about the Word made flesh, whose glory we have seen, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

“After this, there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.”  The Word made flesh goes up to Jerusalem.  The sign that happens there is more than the sign.  Someone has said this – “This is a sign, not an instantaneous solution to all health problems, or an alternative to caring for the sick, or something to be always replicated in similar situations, or even a critique of what was going on at Beth-zatha.”  We said last week, “Jesus is life.”  What does this sign and the following conversations tell us about who Jesus is and he kind of live he gives?  Let’s ask for God’s help as we come to His word today.

Who Is Jesus?

What has come into being in him was life.  “Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate, there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes.  In these lay many invalids – blind, lame, and paralyzed.  One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.”

Throughout the story of God, we learn that God is creative.  God creates.  Toward the end of the spring, the ladies of Blythwood held a wonderful event one Saturday called “Spring Into Creativity” at which they showcased some of the ways in which they exercise their creative or artistic sides.  We are made to be creative, being made in God’s image.  God’s creative activity did not stop at Creation.  When things went wrong for humanity, God went to work to bring us back.  Creating.  Making.  God told Abraham, “I will make of you a great nation through whom all the nations of the world will be blessed.”  God spoke to the people of Israel through the prophets in words like “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Is 43:19)  One day a voice will be heard from the heavenly throne and the voice will say, “See, I am making all things new.” (Rev 21:5) What has come into being in him was life.  “When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, 'Do you want to be made well?” 

Do we want to be made well?  Do we want to be made whole?  Do we want to be made new?

There are a couple of ways to consider this question.  I don’t think it’s too much to say it’s the question of our lives when it comes to Jesus.  One way is to consider the question on a humanity-wide level.  Jesus goes to this man and speaks to this man at this point of need.  The man is in a position from which he is unable to extricate himself.  Suffering.  Lost.  Jesus approaches him and asks the question, “Do you want to be made well?”

The other way to consider the question is to make it personal.  “Do I want to be made well?”  Do I feel that I need to be made well or made whole?  Do we say “I’m good,” to which I would reply, “Are you really good?”  The one in whom we may know life is asking, “Do you want to be made whole?”  If you’ve been following Jesus for quite some time, do you want to be made well?  Do you want to be made whole?  Do you want to be made sound?  From what action/way of thinking/attitude do we need to be delivered?

“Do I want to be made well?”  We do well to consider the question.  The paralyzed man may not so much be an example for us in this story, but let’s not be too too hard on him.  We can get so lost in our problems that we don’t know what we want, or even hear the question.  This man was in the most dire of circumstances, to the point where he doesn’t even answer the question.   No matter what you think of him, there’s a sadness to the situation.  “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”  No one is for him.  Everyone is against him.

The thing is, though, Jesus is before him.  Jesus is for him.  New life is in the air.  If we take nothing else away from today, know that God is for you, and that making whole is what God does. 

Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”  At once, the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.  God speaks, new life happens.  Jesus says it, I trust it.  Stand.  Rise.  Take up your mat and walk in newness of life.  This is the good news portion of the story, and I think we do well to pause here for a few moments and ask the question, “How has Jesus made you new?  How is Jesus making you whole?”   And be thankful.  Jesus meets this man later in the temple.  As I said earlier, there’s no overt profession of faith on this man’s part here (or even knowing who Jesus was, for that matter), but it’s good that he goes to the temple.  Jesus finds him there, we read, and said to him, “See, you have been made well!”  From his fullness we have received grace upon grace.  Jesus reminds the man of grace.  Don’t forget this!  This is the most important event of your life!  Live in gratitude for this!  We have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.  So Jesus also brings the truth to the man.  “Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.”  Now go live out the grace that you have been gifted. 

So far, so good news!  Now the bad news.  It’s not really that bad, though, as it gives us a chance to consider…

What Kind of Life Do We Have In Jesus?

Here’s the bad news.  “Now that day was sabbath.  So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, ‘It is the sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.’  But he answered them, ‘The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’  They said to him, ‘Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take it up and walk?’  Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. What is going on here?  Not working on the sabbath is a command that goes all the way back to creation.  “And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.” (Gen 2:2)  Hear the command from Exodus 2 and how it goes back to the creation story – “Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.  Six days you shall labour and do all your work.  But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.  For in six days the Lod made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.” (Ex 20:8-11)  Keeping the sabbath was one of the most visible ways for the people of God to show their loyalty.  They were even exempted from Roman military service due in part to the sabbath law.  One of the ways the sabbath law rest had been interpreted was that no burden should be carried outside the house (Jer 17:22).  Literally, as in this man carrying his bed.  So why does Jesus do this sign on the sabbath instead of waiting a day?  The aftermath here highlights opposition to Jesus.  John’s use of “the Jews” here signifies Jesus’ opponents, not all Jewish people at the time or in perpetuity.  There will be people who oppose Jesus based on strict adherence to religious tradition, or love of self, or love of money, or pride, or …  The people in our story are so caught up in their way of thinking that they fail to see the new thing that is taking place.   The now-walking man tells them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’”  Note that these opponents of Jesus don’t say, “What do you mean, made you well?? You’ve been paralyzed 38 years!  What wonderful thing is happening here??”  Instead, they ask, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up and walk.’?”  Not only is this man healing on the sabbath, but he’s encouraging others to break the sabbath laws too!

I said this sabbath activity is the bad news, but it’s not really bad.  It gives Jesus the opportunity to say something about his life, and by extension, the lives of those who are in him.  The ancient rabbis had come up with another interpretation of the sabbath law, which was that it didn’t apply to God.  God’s work of sustaining life went on, even on the sabbath, and this was ok.  This came out of Psalm 121:4, 7-8  - “He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep… The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.”

His opponents started persecuting Jesus because he was doing such things on the sabbath.  Jesus’ answer represents the first time he speaks of the unity between himself and his Father.  No matter what day it is, it’s a new lifetime and God is at work!  But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.”  That’s what time it is.  His opponents were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.

The thing with Jesus, the Word made flesh, and God the Father - it’s not simply about equality.  Two people can be equal without having anything to do with one another.  It’s about shared work, relational dependence, loyalty and obedience no matter the circumstance, and the outpouring of divine love.  The relationship between Father and Son is where “Not my will but yours be done” meets “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”     “Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.  The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished.”  Greater works.  More signs.  New life.  Resurrection life.  Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit on his followers and saying, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

The kind of life we are talking about in Jesus is life lived in loving communion with God, Father, Son, and Spirit.  I don’t have a story to illustrate it.  We’ll never come to an end of understanding it, but we are made new in it.  We are made whole in it.  Jesus will compare it later in John to branches abiding (remaining/resting) in a vine.  A living connection in which we know life.  May we be coming to know it even more this summer with four signs still to come.  May this be true for all of us.

Amen 

It’s all about the one toward whom the signs point.  Let us not get too caught up in the signs, as significant as they are in people’s lives.  The first sign was not simply about water being turned into wine.  The second sign is not simply about a son recovering from an illness that had brought him to the point of death, significant though this is.  There’s a song we used to sing called “The Heart of Worship,” and there was a line in the chorus that went “It’s all about you, it’s all about you, Jesus.”  It really is!  Primarily, foundationally, it really is all about Jesus.  This means, of course, that it is primarily and foundationally not all about us.  “What’s in this for me?” has no place here, as prone as we may be to ask this question.

Are we ready to hear Jesus’ questions to us?  “What are you looking for?”  “Do you want to be made well?”  Are we ready for Jesus to ask us questions like “Why did you doubt, you little faith person?” as he is holding on to us.  Remember always that we’re not being beaten up here, especially by Jesus.  Are we ready to hear Jesus say things to us like “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe”?  We, too, may get so caught up in the signs (or the “what’s in this for me”) that we forget the one toward which the signs point.

This was a revelation to me this week, I must tell you.  We’re looking at the seven signs of Jesus in John’s Gospel.  They are water into wine, healing of the official’s son, healing of a paralyzed man, feeding 5,000, walking on water, healing a man born blind, and raising Lazarus from the dead.  I thought, “How is this going to go when so many of these signs are about healing?  How much can one preach on healing?”  The answer, of course, is that these stories of Jesus are not primarily about the signs.  They are about the Word made flesh, without whom not one thing came into being, and what has come into being in him was life, and this life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.  The story of the wedding at Cana is not a lesson in God providing at every party when our supplies run out.  The story of the official’s son is not that every request for recovery from illness will be granted.  If recovery does not come, it’s because we lacked faith, or it’s because God is not worthy of our trust.

Underlying all these stories is John’s declaration – And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.  Grace upon grace.  Truth upon truth, calling for faith upon faith; trust upon trust.  Trust in Jesus is life.  Listen to how John puts it toward the end of his Gospel – “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.  But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”  (20:30-31)

This is serious stuff, and we want to be serious about our trust. We want a trust in Jesus that is not dependent on our circumstances or the questions that we have.  We’re going to have questions after all.  It’s a matter of life and death in our story, so let’s get right to that.  I’m sure many people are asking the question, “How do dozens of children from a Christian summer camp drown in a flash flood?”  That’s like something from Job.  How are two babies born at 5 months, the edge of viability, and one lives and one dies?  Why does my loved one have terminal cancer?   A shallow-soil faith is not going to survive the scorching sun.  “A prophet has no honour in the prophet’s own country,” Jesus used to say.  What are we in the church if not Jesus’ country?  We want Jesus to be honoured here among us, don’t we?  If we thought following Jesus was mainly for our own gain, or that we get from God what we deserve,  we could only think the events at Camp Mystic were some sort of sick joke on God’s part or an act of judgement. We won’t, though, because we want to honour Jesus.  This story, like all our stories, is a matter of life and death.  “Then he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had changed the water into wine.  Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum.  When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.”

This is a well-off man.  Official in King Herod Agrippa’s apparatus.  Jesus is for everyone.  We’ve seen Jesus call fishermen.  We’ve seen Jesus approach a shunned woman of Samaria.  Next week, we’ll see Jesus approach a sick man lying by a pool in Jerusalem.  This man was well off materially.  The Word of Life is for everyone.  The wine will run out, remember, no matter our financial situation.  His son is at the point of death.  This is no “Well, she lived a good, long life” situation.  The grief of an untimely death.  Life is ebbing away.  Jesus’ answer may surprise us.  Are we ready for that?  Do we only want Jesus to tell us what we want to hear?  Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”

Do we think so much of ourselves and our faith that we’re not ready to hear Jesus question our faith?  Do we freely acknowledge that we daily need to be coming to a deeper trust in Jesus?  Do we freely acknowledge that we need to be coming to Jesus daily with the plea, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”  Lord Jesus, I trust, help my lack of trust.  Is our trust mainly dependent on what we see?  Is God worthy of my trust only when things are going the way I think they should?  Only when the people of God are acting the way I think they should act?  Only when I am getting the results for which I am asking? 

Are we ok with Jesus saying to us, “You are setting your heart not on heavenly things but on earthly things”?  Are we ok with Jesus telling us our faith is weak, or is this whole Jesus-following thing simply so we can feel good about ourselves?

The invitation that is before us today, and it is before us every day (no matter if it’s the first time we’re responding or the 15,000^th time), is to respond to Jesus in the same way this royal official does.  What an example, and we don’t even know his name!  I like to think this is so we can put ourselves right in the story.  This man doesn’t say, “How dare you question my faith!”  He doesn’t go away in anger.  The man shows persistent trust that Jesus is life. 

“Sir, come down before my little boy dies.”

I love John’s description of Jesus in chapter 1.  You’ve no doubt gathered this because I keep coming back to it.  We have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.  From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.  Look at the grace that Jesus shows here.  He doesn’t send the man away after speaking of his (and everyone’s) sign-seeking faith.  Martin Luther said this about Jesus in a sermon from 1526 - “If [Jesus] were as impatient as we are, he would at once say to us [in a situation like the officer’s]: ‘Depart from me. I will have nothing to do with you; for you do not believe as you ought.’ Who could ever receive help from him? But the great art of Christ is to know how to deal gently with the weak, not to knock them about and impatiently drive them away.”

Jesus said to him, “Go, your son shall live.”  In him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  This wonderful man, whose story John preserved for us, responds in the good and fitting and proper way in which we are invited to share – The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way.  The man took Jesus at Jesus' word.  The man believed that what Jesus spoke was true.  What the man believed was not dependent on what he saw.  He didn’t need to see.  The man did not say, “Well, let me check and see how he is and get back to you.”  The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way.

This royal official’s faith/trust was such that he believed that what Jesus spoke was true.  This man persisted in the face of a question from Jesus just as Mary persisted in the face of a question from Jesus.  “Do whatever he tells you,” said Mary, and we’re listening.  We’re remembering what Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel.  Believe in the Father, believe also in me.  Trust in the Father, trust also in me.  Abide in me as I abide in you.  Love one another as I have loved you.  Here we are invited into the trust of this royal official who trusted in what Jesus said without having to see any sign.  What does Jesus say about himself in John’s Gospel?  Let us keep those great “I am” statements close to our hearts. 

I am the bread of life.  I am the light of the world.  I am the gate.  I am the good shepherd.  I am the resurrection and the life.  I am the way, the truth, and the life.  I am the vine.  We hear life a lot there, and we face matters of life and death, and we face them trusting that in him we know life.

Ask me how I’m doing.  I’m alive and well. His Spirit is within me.  This is a truth that goes beyond any circumstance I may be in from now to the end of my time on this earth and beyond.  I’m alive and well. His Spirit is within me, because he died and rose again.

So, life.  “As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive.  So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, ‘Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.’  The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus said to him, ‘Your son shall live.’ So he himself  believed, along with his whole household.” (52-53)

When we hear Jesus ask if we’re only trusting because of signs or what might be in it for us, may we say, “You say it, I trust it.”  All I need is your word.  May we say, “Though the fig tree does not blossom and no fruit is on the vine.  Though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no fruit.  Though the flock is cut off from the fold and no herd is in the stalls.  Yet I will rejoice in the Lord.  I will exult in the God of my salvation.”  The one in whom I know life lived the way we were created to live it, in loving company with God.

This kind of trust is contagious.  The man himself believed (he was already trusting, but his trust got deeper) along with his whole household.  I want this for all our households.  Let’s ask God to deepen our trust and let it spread through our households; spread through our circles of love and care.  May this be true for all who hear these words about this, the second sign Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.  We have 5 more to go!  May God continue to speak to our hearts.    Amen 

How about a wedding?  An occasion of unmitigated joy; the creation of something new; a new name; a new relationship; a new covenant… No wonder that the first of Jesus’ signs in John’s gospel comes at a wedding, and the sign is one of abundance.  We’re talking about life here and what has come into being in the Word made flesh and dwelling among us.  Christ Jesus, without whom not one thing came into being and what has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

The main actor.  The star of the show if you like.  We like to think we’re the stars of our own show I know, I’m prone to it.  We live inside our heads after all.  You’d think that the stars of a wedding story would be the bride and groom.  This is normal right?  Not so here.  Jesus goes to a wedding along with his mother and his disciples – they’d all been invited and they were nothing if not social.  Nothing would ever be the same.  Same stuff different day is surely one of the most disheartening life-sapping realities around.  Nothing is ever the same when Jesus is involved.   In him is life.  Let’s pray as we prepare to look at God’s word for us today.

We’re looking at Jesus’ seven signs in the Gospel of John over seven summer weeks here.  Signs point to something beyond themselves.  They point to a greater reality.  The sign with the golden M on the En Route sign on the highway points to a greater and much more wonderful reality of Big Macs and McNuggets and fries and Coke and so on.  Here’s the other thing about these signs.  The involve things that are part of our every day – weddings, celebrations, wine, hospitality, sickness, bread, sight, the weather, wind and water, death and life.

These signs are not simply proof that Jesus is God.  They tell of who he is and what he does.  Weddings are significant events, but we get the idea that there may be something more significant going on when we read the beginning of John’s wedding story.  “On the third day, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.  Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.”  A fairly normal part of village life and the lives of neighbouring villages.  Cana was located about 8 miles north of Nazareth.  Everyone is invited to the wedding.

When Jesus is involved, of course, things take on a new significance.  Light is not just light.  Water is not just something from a well.  Bread is not just bread.  This is one of those stories which I think is still fairly well-known in our culture today.  Water into wine.  It’s been used by people to defend or denounce drinking.  It’s been used by wedding officiants to talk about how it is a good thing to have Jesus involved in marriages.  Nothing wrong with that.   There’s something much more significant going on here when we look at this particular wedding story.  “Do you believe because I saw you under a fig tree?” is what Jesus had asked Nathaniel a little earlier.  “You will see greater things than these.  Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Heaven and earth coming together in this new age that has been inaugurated in Christ.  New life.  New life in Christ.  We’re not just talking about a wedding.  This happens quite a bit in John.  Jesus speaks of being born from above and the question comes back to him “How can someone be born again?” and we realize that Jesus is not talking about returning to our mother’s womb (come on!).  Jesus speaks with a Samaritan woman of living water at a well and all of a sudden we realize he’s not just talking about being thirsty.  There’s a whole other level going on. 

This all sounds most grandiose I know and we need to keep the following truth in mind.  The glory of God is shown in the so-called mundane.  God’s ways are made known to us and through us in the every-day.  There is a problem here in the story (and what’s a story without some sort of problem?).  The wine gave out.  “When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’”  This is the problem and it’s a problem.  The wine is going to run out.  We’re not just talking about wine now of course.  We are talking about the human condition.  There are questions common to the human condition which we all do well to consider.   Where do we look for life?  What does it mean to really live?  In what are in whom do you hope?  What are who is the foundation of your life?  Here is the thing about our lives.  The wine is going to run out.  We will know loss.  We will know regret.  We will know shame. 

Here’s the thing about shame in our story. If you’re from certain cultures you know that running out of food or drink at a party is just not acceptable.  It brings shame to the family.  It’s a bad way to start married life.  Mary informs Jesus.  Does she expect him to do something about it?  It would seem so.  Is she requesting something miraculous?  Possibly.  We don’t know for sure. There were caterers who could handle that sort of thing – replenishment of wine stocks at a multi-day wedding (because these weddings were multi-day affairs).  We do know this.  Jesus is about taking shame away.  Jesus is about acting in the every-day. 

This is not just about win and you see it in Jesus’ response.  There is an ambiguity in the translation of Jesus’ answer to his mother.  Our NRSV Bible says “What concern is that to you and me?”  It can be translated “What do you have to do with me?” which speaks to the relationship between them.  This is not simply a mother talking to her son.  It’s a mother talking to the Son.  “My hour is not yet come,” reminds us of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:1 – “Father, the hour has come to glorify your son…” It might also be seen as a question.  “Has not my hour to go out into the world come?”  

The hour for something has come.  The time for the first sign.  It’s time for the first sign that John gives as to who Jesus is in terms of the Word having become flesh, the Lamb of God, the Son of God, the Son of Man.

He’s the bringer of a new age.  New life.  How do we respond?  We’ve already heard how some have responded in ch 1.  They followed.  They said “Where are staying?”  Jesus said “Come and see.”  Here we have Mary representing a faithful/faith-filled response to the reality of the living Word of God.  She says to the servants “Do whatever he tells you.” The mother of Jesus represents the response of faith.  The response that the Gospel of John is inviting us to.  What is Jesus telling us to do in the Gospel of John? “Believe in the father, believe also in me.”  “Abide in me.”  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  “Woman, here is your son,” to his mother from the cross.  To the disciple whom he loved “Here is your mother.”   Here is the new family of faith into which you’re adopted through me. 

Jesus is the bringer of a new age.  Six stone jars of water, each one holding 20 to 30 gallons.  6X25 gallons is 150 gallons which is 567 litres which is 756 bottles of wine. 

That’s a lot of wine!  We’re not just talking about wine.  That’s an insane amount of wine to introduce at the tail end of a village wedding.  When is wine not just wine?  When the new age has begun; new life is here; God’s grace will be known in a whole new way; and that’s a lot of grace!

“I came that they might have life,” Jesus will say, meaning his sheep, “and have it abundantly.”  Abundant grace.  Grace upon grace.  The prophets had spoken of it.  The lavishness of God’s grace in the age to come.

Joel 3:18 – “In that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine, the hills shall flow with milk, and all the stream beds of Judah shall flow with water; a fountain shall come forth from the house of the LORD…”

Jeremiah 31:13 – “Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry, I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.”

John doesn’t spend any time on when or how it happened any more than he spends time explaining how exactly the Word became flesh.  The point is that spiritual meaning is found in the realities of life.  The chief steward tastes the water that has become wine and says “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” God saves the best for last.  The usual order of life is reversed in the Kingdom of God.  In the new age inaugurated in Christ, the order of life is reversed.  Mourning is turned to dancing.  Sorrow is turned to joy.  The rich go away empty.  The self-sufficient go away empty.  Those who are in need are filled with good things.  Those who know their need for God, their need for grace are filled with good things. 

This man, this God, this Jesus is the source of life.  Eternal life.  What is eternal life?  Jesus will say in a prayer to his Father which we’ll look at in a few weeks.  “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (17:3)

That we may know God.  “I want to know you,” we sing.  We are no longer simply talking about wine or even just a miracle for that matter.  The thing is we can discount miracles.  A miracle is no guarantee of faith.  Even someone coming back from the dead is no guarantee of faith.  Anything can be explained away, after all.  The one who says “If only it could be proven in some way” is not in a position to take the walk of faith and no proof will suffice – not even someone coming back from the dead (as we know).  The invitation to faith is ever before us, and it remains in the answer to the question that someone once asked, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  The invitation to faith is still “Come and see.”  Let us hear the words of the Psalmist newly as we hear the invitation to Jesus’ table.  “Taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him.”  Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.  We might ask at this point, “Weren’t they already believing?  They were following him after all.”  Belief, trust, entrusting our lives to Jesus is not a one-time event.  The word that’s translated “in” here actually means “into” or “toward” like there’s movement involved.  They believed into him.  I want to be believing into Jesus.  I want us all to be trusting into Jesus.  An ever-deepening trust as we consider what it means to daily to live in the grace of God and to understand that all is indeed grace.  “My grace is sufficient for you,” as God told Paul.  All is grace, and God’s grace is overflowing and abundant like hundreds of bottles of wine at a party. 

There’s an interesting postscript to this story.  “After this, he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples, and they remained there a few days.”  They remained with him.  Same word as abide.  “ Abide in me as I abide in you.”  Life returns to normal.  They stay together and they stay with Jesus.  We will get up tomorrow morning and make breakfast and walk the dog and do some laundry and look after ourselves and others and go to work and  and go to our appointments and do all the things that we do as we wait.  We wait for Jesus’ hour to come too, don’t we?  We have tasks to do just like the servants in our story.  We have jars to fill.  As we go about our tasks, may we be reminded that abundant life is not something we need to achieve or even seek.  Life lived in loving communion with God, in gratitude for the gift of grace – is… a gift.  Let us gratefully acknowledge this truth today as we come to the Lord’s Table and every day. May this be true for all who hear these words. 

Amen

We heard about a call to faith and continuing faithfulness.  The righteous shall live by their faith or faithfulness.  Ongoing holding fast to Jesus, who has taken hold of us.  This morning we come to the final chapter.  We come to prayer and song and a statement of faith on the part of the prophet that we are invited to make our own.  We come to praise.

The situation has not changed so much.  We’ve spoken of the historical situation that this book addresses.  Judah was about to be invaded by the Babylonian Empire.  We know the historical situation that we face.   Not a lot has changed, it seems.  One writer puts it like this: “Destruction and violence still mar his community, strife, and contention still arise.  Nations still rage and devour those weaker than they.  The arrogant still rule, the poor still suffer, the enslaved still labour for emptiness.  And false gods are still worshipped on the earth.”

I don’t have to draw you a picture.  We have our eyes open.  Faith is not a call to seclusion or reclusion (not all the time anyway).  We also know the personal situations that we and those we love face (and isn’t it good to be able to share those situations and help carry one another’s burdens in the family of God?).

Where do we begin?  We begin with a prayer.  A prayer that’s actually a song.  We need a song, I believe.  We need to be doing things that keep the truths contained within the prophet’s message in front of us all the time.  You’ll note that much of this chapter is set up like a psalm.  Which are songs.  Which are prayers.  You can tell it’s a song from the way it’s set up – “…according to Shigionoth”, which we read in the Psalms.  No one is 100% sure what it means, but it denotes a song.  Same thing with “Selah”.  It’s like a musical break.  A stopping to consider truth about the One whom we praise.

We talked last week about the story of God being, in part, a story of a conversation between God and people.  We hear God’s voice in His Word.  The call for us is to respond.  Praise of God together is one such response.  Singing together, no matter the quality of our voice.  It doesn’t matter.  Praising God alone in song or with the words “Praise God from whom all blessings flow/Praise him all creatures here below/Praise Him above ye heavenly host/Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost/Amen!”  The prophet issues an invitation to prayer and praise.  Not only the invitation but the means.  To stand in awe of God.  Recognize God’s “otherness”.  Recognize the failure of our own self-sufficiency.  The myth of our own self-sufficiency.  When we come together to praise God, we are visibly and tangibly expressing our need, our thanks, our desire to know God more, our love.  Our prayers.

Praise and prayer.  Look at what the prophet prays.  “I have heard of your renown.”  I have heard about what you’ve done.  I’ve heard that you’re a God who delivers.  Then comes the plea.  “I stand in awe, O Lord, of your work.  In our own time revive it; in our own time make it known…”   Another translation has it “In the midst of our years”.   In the midst of our years, make your grace, your mercy, your love, your justice known.

This is our prayer, too, because like the prophets of the OT, we live in a time of waiting.  We live in the “already/not yet” of the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom that was announced by and brought about in the person of Jesus, in his life and death and resurrection.  We await the fulfillment of this Kingdom when Jesus will come again.  This means that our primary concern is not with ourselves, or even our own service – note that Habakkuk’s plea is not that God makes him an ever more effective prophet – but that God’s purposes are fulfilled.  One writer puts it like this:

“There is our focus – the Kingdom of God…The question… is, Has the time of the Kingdom drawn nearer?  Has God’s purpose been advanced?  Is his banner still on high? The church’s goal is every knee bent and every tongue confessing Christ’s lordship.  The church’s concern is the glory of the Lord known over all the earth.  The Church’s cause is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, in all and through all.  And so the church’s prayer is and must ever be, “O Lord, in the midst of the years, renew thy work.  Bring in thy Kingdom on this earth, even as it is in heaven.”

Amen!

We heard last week that there was still a vision for the appointed time.  God’s kingdom coming in all its fullness.  The wolf shall live with the lamb.  They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, God said in Isaiah 11.  A new heaven and a new earth from John’s vision in Revelation 21.  The voice from the throne saying, “See, I am making all things new.” 

There is still a vision for the appointed time.  We live in confident expectation of deliverance for all of creation because our God is a delivering God.  God’s deeds of deliverance in the past are remembered.  Habakkuk recalls the deliverance of the people of Israel from the Egyptian empire.  “Before him went pestilence, and plague followed close behind.”  A reminder that God will not allow oppression to go unchecked forever.  “The eternal mountains were shattered along his ancient pathways, the everlasting hills sank low.”  No matter how strong and impervious the Empire might seem – and it may seem as impervious and eternal as mountains -it is no more impervious than those mountains to the will of God to bring justice and peace and in the midst of it all mercy.  “In wrath remember mercy,” was the prophet’s prayer, and we should always pray for mercy even for those who oppress.  (And we remember Jesus’ prayer, “Forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”)  “Was your wrath against the rivers, O Lord? Or your anger against the rivers, or your rage against the sea, when you drove your horses, your chariots to victory?” goes the song. 

The answer, of course, is “No!”  God’s wrath was against sin and death, which disorder/destroy relationship,s and so God came to do something about it.  The brightness was like the sun, we read.  How could we not remember “In him was life and the life was the light of all people.”  How could we read “You came for the to save your people, to save your anointed.  You crushed the head of the wicked house, laying it bare from foundation to roof,” and not remember the promise made so long ago to the liar, the accuser, “He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”  The victory has been won.  The victory is being won.  The victory will be won.

We rejoice in such truths in our praise.  We name such truths in our praise.  We don’t do so to remind God, but to remind ourselves.  Praise and prayer doesn’t necessarily change circumstances, but they change us through the power of God’s Spirit within us.  One commentator wrote this: “One thing we surely have in common with the prophet Habakkuk is an awareness that lots of things have gone and are going wrong in the world at large, in our communities, and in our own lives.”  We have been reminded that there is still a vision for the appointed time.  The one who promises “I will be with you always, even to the end of the age” is still in the boat with us.  We have been reminded that the righteous will live by their faith/faithfulness/ongoing trust in the God who has shown Himself to be wholly and utterly trustworthy.

 We end with this great statement of faith.  A statement which affirms that no matter what our circumstances, we will praise.  We will rejoice.  We will know peace in our Lord. 

Though the fig tree does not blossom,

and no fruit is on the vines;

though the produce of the olive fails,

and the fields yield no food;

though the flock is cut off from the fold,

and there is no herd in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the LORD;

I will exult in the God of my salvation.

God, the LORD, is my strength;

he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,

and makes me tread upon the heights.”

We talked last week about being messengers; about being living letters of Christ.  Here we’re like deer.  The same image is sung in Psalm 18:33 – “He made my feet like the feet of a deer, and set me secure upon the heights.”  Here’s the thing about the deer.  These are not North American deer.  We may think, “What’s with all this sure-footed on heights talk?  The deer here are more like the Nubian Ibex.  They like heights.  They head up on the rocks.  No matter how rocky or precarious the situation, He makes me sure-footed like a deer.

The book ends with this musical direction – “To the leader: with stringed instruments.”  I like that.  I like stringed instruments.  I like the instruction.  Play it this way.  Sing it out.  Keep this message going.  Make it known.  Hold fast to the faith.  Hold fast to that for which Christ has taken hold of you.  May we continue to live as people of faith, friends, knowing in the midst of all the uncertainty that makes up our world and makes up our lives, how the story ends.  May God make this ever more clear to us and through us.

Amen

Is it 2025?  1990?  The 7^th century before Christ?  This is the situation that the prophet Habakkuk finds himself in when he receives an oracle from the Lord, a vision from the Lord, the word of the Lord.  We’re going to be spending three weeks in this book, which is so timely, as the Word of God is.  I don’t need to describe the situation we face in our city, our country, our world.  I don’t need to describe the situation we face in our church.  Things aren’t what they used to be, are they?  Who are we called to be?  What are we called to do?  Pray.

External circumstances often seem beyond our control because they are.  They’re external.  It’s in the name!  Prior to King Charles’ visit to read the Throne Speech, I heard a story about a group of young women who had gone to London for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953.  They called the “Coronation Girls” – 50 young women who had been collected by grain as it travelled across Canada.  They then went on to London.  They reunited last year to visit King Charles – a wonderful, long-standing connection that they share.  They were each given a memorial coin to mark their visit in 1953, on which was inscribed these lines of verse – “'Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales, that tells the way we go.”  Later in the poem, we read “'Tis the set of the soul/That determines the goal/And not the calm or the strife.”

While these lines are not explicitly Christian, they speak to a larger truth, and this image of the church as people in a boat is a good one.  We just finished many weeks in the Gospel of Matthew, and all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) contain this story.  Let us hear it and hear good news this day.  Told in 5 verses by Matthew.  Read Matthew 8:23-27.

Dear friends, there are many circumstances which vex and perplex.  We may ask, “How long?” We may ask, “How could such a thing be?”  One of the messages which we will hear from the prophet Habakkuk (and remember, prophets tell it like it is) is “We have a hope.”  Circumstances, the wind and the waves which seem about to swamp us, are not outside God’s control.  International/societal/demographic/socio-economic/geo-political/church-wide trends/indicators/successes/failures do not come to God as a surprise.  What sort of man is this, the disciples asked, that even the wind and the waves obey him?  He’s our risen Jesus, and he is in the boat with us.

Habakkuk lived in a time when only little Judah was left.  The Kingdom of Israel, as it had been known in David and Solomon’s time, had been divided.  Things weren’t like they used to be.  The northern kingdom of Israel (or Ephraim) had already been invaded and taken over by the Assyrian Empire.  A new empire was rising to the south – though really the south-east in Babylon.  The Babylonians or Chaldeans, as they’re referred to here.  Listen to the words that Habakkuk uses to describe the situation that he sees – violence, wrongdoing, trouble, destruction, violence, strife, contention, the law becomes slack, justice never prevails, the wicked surround the righteous, judgement comes forth perverted.  What I know about a loving God is not in line with what I’m seeing.   How do we live by faith in the middle of such turmoil and such questions?  We turn to God.  We lament.  Habakkuk begins a conversation with God in chapter 1, and he starts with lament. “O Lord, how long?”  “How long, O Lord?”  I was talking to someone recently who told me how they were coming to a deeper understanding of prayer, of how prayer is so much more than simply asking God.  I told them to read the Psalms.  Pray a Psalm every day, they’re prayers.  Listen to this lament from Psalm 13 – “How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?  How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?” (Ps 13:1-2a)   ament – “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?”  Things are difficult.  The question of why is uppermost.  I don’t understand.  Read verses 2-3.  We’re reminded here about the importance of praying for others.  intercessory prayer.  Praying for others without ceasing.  This is a really interesting thing about this lament.  Here we have Habakkuk asking the question on behalf of others.  Violence is all around him.  Injustice is all around him.  People with money and/or position, and/or privilege, are able to work the system to their advantage, and there is no justice.  The law becomes slack.  The wicked surround the righteous.  How could we not cry out to God?  How could we not be jarred and dismayed?  We who follow Christ are called to be clothed with Christ, remember, to be clothed with mercy and kindness and compassion and peace and justice and love that does nothing but seek the good of others.  How could we not be jarred and dismayed by the violence and strife and contention and vitriol and fear and anger and hate by which we are surrounded and into which we may all too easily be sucked in?  I like to say that God wants us to be honest with Him.  These words of Habakkuk give us both permission and a language with which to bring our concerns before God. 

The thing is, these concerns needn’t only be societal.  They needn’t only be geopolitical.  Habakkuk is searingly personal.  One writer puts it like this:

“Habakkuk here faces the dilemma that has confronted faithful people in every age – the dilemma of seemingly unanswered prayer for the healing of society.  The prophet is one with all those persons who fervently pray for peace in our world and who experience only war, who pray for God’s good to come on earth and who find only human evil.  But he is also one with every soul who has prayed for healing beside a sickbed only to be confronted with death; with every spouse who has prayed for love to come into a home and then found only hatred and anger; with every anxious person who has prayed for serenity but then been further disturbed and agitated.”  With the soul who has prayed for reconciliation and has only found a broken relationship.  With the soul who has prayed for their children and has found them straying.  

So we pray.  We lament.  We listen for God’s voice.  God’s voice may not speak what we want to hear.  It’s not about what we want to hear.  Are we in the habit of only telling people what they want to hear?  Do we want others to tell us only what we want to hear?  If so, I hope we get out of that habit.  Listening for God’s voice must never be about looking for what we want to hear or how we want things to go.   What God says might be considered somewhat surprising, but we can take it.  Remember who is in the boat with us.  Here’s the thing.  It’s bad, Habakkuk.  It’s going to get worse.  “Look at the nations and see!  Be astonished!  Be astounded!  For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told.”  God goes ahead and tells it anyway.  “For I am rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.”  An expansionist empire that is dread and fearsome.  Such empires have always been with us, and they’re around today.  Their justice proceeds from themselves.  Their horses are swifter than leopards, more menacing than wolves at dusk; their horses charge.  You may be going “Hold on hold on – these are the people through whom God is going to advance his salvation plan – his kingdom plan??”  Well, yes, actually.  You didn’t think he only used the righteous, did you?  You didn’t think he relied solely on us?  Now that’s humbling.  This gives us a lens through which to look at world events.  Empires rise and fall, the word of the Lord endures forever.  The word of the Lord is that one day the renewal of all things will come.  The word of the Lord is that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.  There’s a lot of talk around right now about national sovereignty,  No event in human history is to be understood as outside of the sovereignty of God, or derailing God’s story into which we are invited to be caught up in Christ and in the power and presence of the Holy Spriit of God who is roaming abroad and in us. One writer puts it like this  -“God is always at work, always involved, always pressing forward towards his Kingdom.”  Let us press on together in Him. 

We get perplexed.  We don’t understand. Habakkuk doesn’t understand how God could use such a people to advance God’s saving plan.  Things are going to get worse, says God.  Judah will be invaded multiple times in the coming decades.  Jerusalem will be overrun.  It’s best and brightest carried away into captivity.  So many killed.  This will not be the end, though.  Those captives will be told by God, “Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat what they produce.”  Do not lose heart, do not lose hope.  “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”  And also, I’m going to bring you back.  The destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC was not the destruction of God’s saving plan, any more than Good Friday was the destruction of God’s saving plan.  A righteous remnant remained, you see.  Relatively small in number, things not like they used to be, but God’s plan moves forward. So fellow exiles, so fellow post-Easter people, we do not lose hope.  Destruction is not how the story ends, and lament is not where we end either.  We may be afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed, sure but not driven to despair, persecuted but never forsaken, struck down but not destroyed.  Listen to the end of Psalm 13 – “But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.  I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.”  The most famous song of lament must be Psalm 22.  I say most famous because Jesus spoke it from the cross.  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  In the middle of his lament and questioning, Habakkuk reminds us of truth and declares he belongs to God – “Are you not from of old, Oh Lord my God, my Holy One?”  Listen to the next lines, which follow the opening lament of Psalm 22,  In Christ, circumstances do not dictate the end, not even death itself.  The wind and the waves do not dictate our course. The risen Christ is in the boat, and there is always an “And yet…” Listen to the whole thing from verses 1-4 and be glad! Psalm 22:1-4.

Who will stand with me in this hope?  I’m still standing.  This is the last of the three responses into which we are being invited this morning.  God has answered.  Habakkuk is perplexed.  Another answer is coming, which we’re going to hear next week, and it might be unexpected too.  As we wait, we stand together.  Habakkuk is still perplexed, but he knows what to do. “I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, what he will answer concerning my complaint.” (2:1)

Cliffhanger!  Tune in next week. Same church time, same church channel.  In the meantime, let us be people who pray, hope, and stand.  May this be true for us all. Amen

The Holy Spirit descending like a dove and a voice from heaven said “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  Just as Jesus is sent, we are sent.  We   We will go out of here this morning and we’re going to go out having heard this truth.  To live in Christ means that the same Holy Spirit that descended like a dove and alighted on Jesus lives in you and in me. It’s Holy Spirit Sunday!  The day we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit – or the Advent of the Holy Spirit if you like (and I do like because it’s like Christmas for the Holy Spirit in June!).

It’s a good thing to take one Sunday to celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit.  We endeavour of course to be Trinitarian (Father/Son/Holy Spirit) in all our praise and prayer and worship and thanks and preaching and table gathering and the things we are called to do.  Our actions.  Because the Holy Spirit is about our actions too.  This supernatural Spirit of the Living God effects the natural – the Holy Spirit is not just something floating around up here and the Holy Spirit is not just about endless thought or speculation or someone for us to hold internally, but someone who informs and effects our every thought, action, attitude – which means the Holy Spirit affects everything – all that we are – as we go through our days.

The Holy Spirit is wild and unpredictable.  The Holy Spirit is compared to fire, tongues of fire that touched everyone who was gathered around that room on that long-ago day of Pentecost.  Compared to a wind that blows wherever it wants.  “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit,” as Jesus tells Nicodemus in a late-night talk.  Outside of our control.  How does that make us feel, we who so want to be in control of things/situations?  Extra-biblically compared to a wild goose – unpredictable (and if you’ve never heard the story about how I found out that even domestic geese can be pretty unpredictable, do ask me about it).  Compared to a bird hovering over the waters in Genesis.  Compared to a dove which comes down in the scene from Matthew 3 which we read this morning and alights on Jesus.

A dove.  Peace.  A gift.  Fire.  A refining fire.  A gift.  The gift of the Spirit.  Thank you, Lord, for the gift of your Spirit.  Thank you Holy Spirit, for all that you do.  For all that you are.  The gift of God.  God the three-in-one.  How wonderful to see all three in this scene today.

First of course we have to talk about good old John the Baptist.  The forerunner.  The one who went ahead.  The one of who told it like it is. 

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

And so we read that the Holy Spirit came with tongues like fire touching all those who were gathered.  We read about refining fire and sing “Refiner’s Fire” and “Search me O God, and know my thoughts, cleanse me.”  Refine me by your Spirit.

Which is a gift from God.  To live in Christ is to know our need for transformation.  Being resurrection people.  Being new life people crying out “Spirit make me new.”  It’s not something we could do on our own.  If it were we would have already done it surely.  The Holy Spirit is the gift of God which underlies all of the things we’ve been talking about over these many weeks in Matthew’s Gospel about who we are called to be and what we are called to do.  Hearing Jesus’ words.  Doing Jesus’ words.

Jesus approaches his cousin to be baptized and his cousin is aghast.  “You need to be baptizing me!” John the Baptist says.  Jesus talks about fulfilling all righteousness.  In other words, bringing about right-living.  Not that Jesus needed to be made right, but in his lining up with everyone else on the banks of the River Jordan, Jesus identifies with our need.

This is a really beautiful thing.  Isn’t this something we all need?  Someone to identify with us? Someone to get us?  Jesus is identifying himself with us. Jesus gets us.  There is a picture on the Out of the Cold section of our website.  One of really wonderful things coming out of COVID is seeing where God has led us in the Out of the Cold ministry.  We want to continue to hear Jesus’ words like “I was hungry and you gave me food.  I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.  I was a stranger and you welcomed me.  I was naked and you gave me clothing.  I was sick and you took care of me.  I was in prison and you visited me… Truly I tell you just as you did it to one of the least  of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”  Jesus is lining up with everyone in need, which is everyone.  ministry here at Blythwood, but we know we won’t be forgetting Jesus’ words about “whatever you did for the least of these.”  This picture is of a woodcutting which depicts Christ identifying with, standing with, being with, those who are cast to the margins.  I like this woodcutting a lot.  How much have we learned about what it means to come alongside people in the same way God comes alongside us?  Not simply in a “let me give you a hand up rather than a hand-out way” but in a “thank-you for extending the invitation to me to stand with you, to sit with you, to stand with you as we line up for food together and then sit and eat together” way.  Jesus identifies with us in our need and lines up at the Jordan along with everyone else.  All of humanity are united in our need for help beyond ourselves and the invitation to get behind Jesus and follow him daily is for everyone. 

I talked about being Trinitarian earlier, and all three are in the next seen – loving God, gracious Jesus, fellowshipping Holy Spirit:

“And when Jesus had been baptized, as he came up from the water (sounds like immersion to me), suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’” (16-17)

Here is a truth about God.  We’ve said from the beginning of this series that Matthew out of all the Gospel writers is most concerned to show what the Christian life looks like.  What does it mean in our days, as we go about our days, to follow Christ?  In order for us to be coming to an understanding of what it means, of what following Christ practically looks like, we need to be coming to an understanding of what God is like.  In this scene, we see very clearly that God is a communal God.  Our God is three-in-one – three persons one essence, as God has been described, and I can’t do any better than that word-wise.  It’s not something I can get my mind around and I’m not expected to, none of us are.  I wouldn’t have it any other way really.  God is a communal God and we are all made in God’s image and we were all made for community.  It’s why isolation is so hard on us.  It’s why gathering together (whether it’s for worship, work, sharing a meal) feels so right and good.  From time-unfathomable, God, in the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit has existed in loving communion.

So, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

then

The Holy Spirit descended like a dove and alighted on him.

The Holy Spirit at work from Jesus’ conception.  The Holy Spirit leading Jesus into the wilderness (and we must always remember that even in the wilderness we experience God’s presence and provision and protection).  Jesus talking of performing miracles through the Spirit of God.  Jesus’ final command to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Jesus’ final promise “Remember I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

This same Spirit coming on the followers of Christ on that first Pentecost day.  The advent of the Holy Spirit. Like Christmas in June but without the snow and food and presents (which is maybe just as well).  The Holy Spirit in us.   The Holy Spirit connecting us to God.  The Holy Spirit between us, connecting us to one another.  The Holy Spirit of Christ in you recognizing the Holy Spirit of Christ in me. And vice versa. 

Christ in you, the hope of glory.  The Holy Spirit of God.  Oh sure the Holy Spirit had come on people before or seized them even for a while but this is now something else entirely.  The Holy Spirit of God.  God with us.

The power of God.  Empowerment for service.  A cleansing fire.  A mark of our identity.  The down payment on the inheritance that is ours as adopted daughters and sons of God.  The giver of fruit – love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness self-control.  

 These are all things that the Holy Spirit does and we are thankful for them.  We mustn’t stop though, at what the person of the Holy Spirit does.  I want us to think for some moments before we close of the vision of God here that Matthew describes – a look at Father, Son, and Spirit acting in concert and in tune with one another.  It speaks not only to what we are called to do as the Spirit empowered church but who we are called to be.  The inter-relatedness among Father, Son, and Spirit has been called the Social Trinity – as I said we’re social beings and we’re made in the image of God.  We’re social beings.   This Social Trinity has been described like this – “The Social Trinity is conceived of as a relational community of equality and mutuality within which the distinctive identity of each person of the Trinity is fully maintained as Father, Son, and Spirit… All three persons of the divine community mutually indwell one another in a relational unity while maintaining their distinct identities.”

I believe that we’re called to reflect this divine community of Father, Son, and Spirit.  This divine community has been portrayed in different ways.  It’s been called the divine dance.  It’s been thought of and portrayed in images like this one.  It can be so difficult in the waters of individualism in which we swim.  Autonomy.  Individual rights.  Individual spirituality.  These often seem to rule the day.  In the middle of this, we are invited into participation in the divine life of Father, Son, and Spirit which is a life of mutual indwelling, mutual communion, mutual koinonia, mutual sharing, or fellowship.  The Holy Spirit connects us to this life and connects us to one another.  Let us not forsake then, communion with one another.  Fellowship with one another.  We celebrate the Holy Spirit today.  The tie that binds our heart in love of God and one another.  The tie that calls us into participation in the divine life of Father, Son, and Spirit, and each other’s lives too.  Why?

So that God’s glory may be known and shown in us and through us.  May the Holy Spirit’s peace, guiding, strength be with us.  May the Holy Spirit’s invitation to fellowship, to communion, be accepted by us.  May this be true for each and every one. Amen

This is where we left off – “I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.”  Here we are with God’s answer.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we look at God’s word together.

The story of God is a story a conversation between God and people are invited into His saving work – God’s saving/delivering plan for humanity and indeed all of God’s good creation   From the call of Abraham to the long discussion Moses has with God as to why he’s in no way qualified to do what God’s asking him to do.  From the promise made to David that God would establish his throne forever, to the echo of that promise made by the angel Gabriel to young Mary.  To the prayer that Jesus, God as man, makes to his Father in a garden, which ends with “Not my will but yours be done.” 

God answers Habakkuk beginning in v2.  We’ve been waiting for this all week after last Sunday’s cliffhanger ending! No answer is given by God regarding timelines or explanations as to why/how.

God’s answer to Habakkuk is, “I’m giving you a job to do.”  Then the Lord answered me and said, “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.  For there is still a vision for the appointed time;” In other words, live in hope, and make your hope known.  There is so much left ambiguous here, so many questions that are left unanswered.  Is the runner here someone who’s reading the vision as if it were written on the ancient equivalent of a billboard?  Make it plain so that someone running past might read it?  Unlikely given the relative unpopularity of running in ancient Judah, but it works as an image.  Is this an allusion to ancient messengers who would be tasked with making news known?  This really works as an image!  People who were selected, trained, could go 100km in a day (unimaginable!), trustworthy, familiar with the terrain, courageous.  Write the vision.  Make it plain on tablets so that a runner may read it.  Make the vision known.

To follow Jesus is to be a living letter of Jesus.  We want to be coming to a deeper understanding of who God is and who we are in Christ with the living Spirit of Christ in us.  Listen to how Paul uses this image in 2 Corinthians – “You yourselves are our letter (he’s talking about a letter of recommendation), written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

I am a living letter of Jesus.  You are a living letter of Jesus.  What is this going to mean the next time I am cut off in traffic?  Write the vision.  Make it plain on tablets so that a runner may read it.  We’re the runners.  I have fought the good fight.  I have finished the race, Paul said near the end of his life.  I have kept the faith.  I have held fast.

At this point, we should address the question, “What is the vision?”  Is it the rest of Habakkuk 2?  Is it all of Habakkuk?  Is it historical events?  Is it the whole of God’s story as it’s been revealed to us in God’s word?  The answer is, of course, “Yes.”  The Babylonian empire, like all empires, will rise and fall.  The writing was on the wall.  Babylon will fall.   In 539 BC, the army of King Cyrus of Persian will march into the city.  The divine promise was that God would make a nation from Abraham through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed, and that promise would not be thwarted.  The divine promise was that God would establish David’s throne forever through one who would come from his line, and that promise would not be thwarted by some expansionist empire, no matter how bad things looked or look or will look.  Listen to the divine vision from Isaiah 11:6-9.  Listen to the divine vision from Revelation 21.  We are a people who hope, and that means that we are a people who live in confident expectation of God because the God to whom we belong is good.

So let us personalize this.  Write the vision, make it plain on tablets so that a runner may read it.  Let us ask God to make the vision plain in our lives, in our actions, in our words, in my messages.  Let us personalize this as I ask you a question.   'What truth about God are you being called by God to make plain in your words and deeds?'  This could be for you individually, for our church, or both.  Right now, I would say this – “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.”  I put this question to people in our church, including our Board of Deacons.  Here are some of the answers:  God has the last word.  I lay it in God’s hands.  God’s plan, God’s timing is over all.  God’s laws were self-sustaining, and ours tend to be self-destructive.  Wait on God.  Above all, trust God.

Let us keep these truths in front of us.  Let us remind one another of them.  Let us keep on running together.  The vision may not be apparent in our world or in our lives.  “There is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and it does not lie.  If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.” (2:3-4)

There is a call to steadfastness here, a call to holding fast.  It’s a call that I believe speaks plainly to people of faith in what I see as the biggest danger for us.  I think that the biggest danger for us is not that one day we are going to say, “You know what, all this Christ stuff is not really for me.”  Kind of like a reverse epiphany.  I think the bigger danger for us is that we are beginning to drift.  That we begin to drift away from the practices that have held us fast to Christ.  That we begin to let cultural currents take us away from the thing that matters most in this life.  That we begin to see the problems of our world-the – the problems of our life – less and less through the lens of Christ and his birth and death and resurrection and promised return, and more and more through the lens of.

Well, often through our own lens. I suppose.  The autonomous lens.  The lens if self-sufficiency.  The lens of “I got this” or “We got this.”   So, how are we doing with our self-sufficiency?  The problem with this lens is that, through it, the problems of the world and the problems of people like us in the world tend to either overwhelm us or cause rampant indifference within us.

While the Kingdom of God is open to everybody, it’s not for everybody.    Which brings us to the verse that’s been described as one of the central affirmations of Biblical faith.  The first thing described is what faith is not – Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them.  What do we worship?  Weapons of war in the same way the Chaldeans worshiped the metaphorical nets in which they caught up other nations and people like helpless fish?  The pursuit of wealth?  An everything-is-meaningless and hopeless nihilism/despair?  Ourselves – when we are depending on things like smarts, wealth, charm, and the ability to figure things out.  We are puffed up.  Our spirit is not right in us.  Something is crooked within us when we are not living in harmony with our creator.  We see the results all around us. 

1. To react to God’s saving work in Christ in a way that is fitting and proper and right and good.  To live by faith or faithfulness. Trust in God that is not simply a one-time thing that might be affected by adverse circumstances, but ongoing trust in and dependence on and reliance on God. “Faithfulness means placing one’s whole life in God’s hands, and trusting him to fulfill it, despite all outward and inward circumstances… Faithfulness is life by God’s power rather than one’s own, and therefore it is truly life because it draws its vitality from the living God who is the source of all life.” 

The One who is faithful.  This is the thing about our own faith, our own trust in God.  It’s based on God’s faithfulness.  Part of God’s nature is to keep promises.  So we live in hope.  So we live with a confident expectation of good, no matter our circumstances. The writer to the Hebrews picks up the language from verse 4 in Hebrews 10:36-39. 

We won’t shrink back.  God will bring about his promises.  Evil, oppression, injustice will not be allowed to stand forever.  We cry out, “How long?” in the meantime, knowing this.  We have what’s known as “woe oracles” here. These speak of the future, and they speak out about what’s going on in the present.  “Alas for you who heap up what is not your own.  How long will you load yourselves with goods taken in pledge?  Will not your own creditors suddenly rise, and those who make you tremble wake up?  Then you will be booty for them.”  Injustice will not be allowed to stand forever.  Empires come and go.  Those who worship created things will find that the things they worship teach lies.  “Alas for you who say to the wood, ‘Wake up!’  To silent stone, ‘Rouse yourself!’  Can it teach?  See, it is gold and silver plated, and there is no breath in it at all.” 

In Christ, there is fullness of life.  That might be my new message.  We can have more than one.  I’m going to invite us to write down the message that God is laying on our hearts today.  The message you are being called to run with, to make plain as you go through your days.  Through everything, we continue to come to God together, to listen for God’s voice, to watch and wait in confident expectation of good.  Through it all, the prophet reminds us of this truth - “But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him!”  We’ve been given a vision.  We’re called and enabled to live it out.  We’re called to praise, too, and we’ll look at that next week as we finish.  May God continue to plant and nurture his vision so that all may see with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, and may this be true for us all.

 Amen  

This morning, Jesus is talking about a party.

This is where this whole thing is going, of course, towards a party. The kingdom of heaven is like a wedding banquet.  We can hardly imagine a more joyous occasion.  At this point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has entered Jerusalem.  He’s in the Temple and he’s facing opposition from the Temple authorities, who are questioning his authority.  In response, Jesus speaks in parables.  He tells about a man with two sons whom he asks to work in his vineyard.  He tells of a landowner who planted a vineyard and leased it to tenants; how these tenants killed his representatives and finally his own son.  Thirdly, he talks about a man who threw a wedding banquet for his son.  Most definitely, Jesus is addressing the fact that religious leaders of his day are about to reject the one sent from God.  It seems reasonable to assume that Jesus is talking about the coming destruction of Jerusalem when he talks about a city being burned in v 7.

Most definitely, Jesus has something to say to us today in this parable.  This parable that invites us to dream of what might be; to dream of what is coming as well as what is here.  A parable that invites us to look at the table we’ll gather around this morning with new eyes.  Eyes of faith that see beyond what’s readily apparent.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we prepare to look at this story and hear what God has to say to our hearts.

The first thing that this parable reminds us of is that there is a king.  “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.”  You may say, “Well, this seems so self-evident that it hardly bears mentioning” – to which I would reply, “I think it bears mentioning because we need reminding.”  This is one of those truths that I like to say we need to keep in front of us every day.  There is a King who is working out his purposes for the world which he has created.  There have been many theories throughout the ages about what will bring about utopia.  We get the feeling that things can be better, that they should be better.  What is going to bring this about?  An economic system?  A system of government?   Innovation?  This story puts forward right from the beginning that the one who will bring about the end of injustice and the answer to all the questions that plague us is the King.

Who gave a wedding banquet for his son?  In Jesus’ time, weddings were a big deal.  I guess they’ve always been.  The wedding season is approaching.  I’m thankful to be looking forward to taking part in two weddings in the coming months.  The way invitations worked back then was that an initial invite would be sent out, kind of like a save-the-date, though the exact date wasn’t specified.  When the time came, a second invitation would go out.  The thing that I want us to stop and think about, though, is simply this.

We’ve been invited to this banquet.

Let us never lose the wonder of this.  The wonder that we’ve been invited at all.  The wonder of the invitation that’s been extended to us to come to this table.  The wonder that we can approach a wholly holy and ineffable God through the person of his son, who became flesh and walked among us, and showed us his glory full of grace and truth.  May this be something that always causes wonderment in us.  There’s a great song that goes like this - “Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and create a willing spirit in me.”   May this be our prayer, friends.  May we never take the invitation for granted or shun it.  May we always accept it with joyful hearts that we get to do this.  To not see anything in this Christian life as an obligation but rather as a gift.  The wonder of it all.

And the joy.  The invitation is to a wedding banquet.  The question is sometimes asked of clergy people, “Do you prefer to do weddings or funerals?”  I always say weddings because they are occasions of unmitigated joy.  They’re simply joyful!  Even if there have been bad feelings or negative undertones, they are put aside on the day of a wedding because it is a joyous event.  There are not many long faces at weddings!

Is it any wonder that the Kingdom of Heaven is compared to a man who threw a wedding banquet for his son?  This same imagery is used by John when he recounts what was revealed to him – “Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderclaps, crying out, ‘Hallelujah!  For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.  Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready;’” (Rev 19:6-7)

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory.  For an invitation has been made.  The way has been opened for us through the Son of God.  This is simply good news.  Are there demands placed on us in this Christ-following life?  Most assuredly.  We’ll talk more about those in a few minutes.  Before there are any demands, though, there is simply an invitation.  Come to me, all you who are weary and bearing heavy burdens.  I have told you these things that in me you may have peace. 

This is the hospitality of God.  I admire the hospitality in Jesus’ day.  It’s still abroad in many cultures, of course.  I often think our own North American culture could do with more of it.  Someone has described it much like this: not to provide hospitality was a discourtesy; to refuse hospitality was a deliberate insult.  The invitation is not to refuse him.

Why are so many refusing in this parable?  There are reasons to refuse the invitation, of course.  In the story, they made light of it.  In other words, there were heavier matters to attend to.  One went to his farm.  One went to his business.  In Luke’s version of this parable, one was getting married.  We can put other things ahead of Jesus.  Things that in of themselves are not bad things.  Farms are good.  Businesses are good.  Marriages are good.  They can be anyway.  They can get in the way.  We’ve said through this series that God is not coercive.  God is not going to force anyone to accept the invitation.  It’s not a decision we can make on behalf of anyone else.  I can’t decide for you.  You can’t decide for me.

I often say that it’s not an easy thing to follow Jesus’ invitation to come and die.  To die to ourselves – our own will, our own biases, our own prejudices.  To take Jesus’ invitation seriously, we need to ask for God’s help with it every day. 

We make the invitation too once we’ve taken it.  The thing is, if you’ve made a decision about this banquet one way or another, it’s because someone told you about it.  You heard about it from someone.  Note that the king is using slaves to issue the invitations.  Throughout history, God has used people to make his invitation known.  From the prophets of the Old Testament to Christ himself calling out “Follow me” to the apostles being sent out two by two to the church of Acts calling out “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  For the promise is for you, for your children, for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.”

Hear the invitation.  Make the invitation.

God grant that we may be good invitations.  Winsome invitations to the Kingdom of God which is like a man who gave a wedding banquet for his son.  Which is a cause for joy.  God grant that we be joyous invitations in our lives, in our words, in our actions, in our attitudes and thoughts.  In our joy.  HT writes in TWF, “I fear, however, that in this respect we Christians often represent our Lord very badly.  The glum, sour faces of many Christians, who frequently look as if they had gallstones (all those who really have them will excuse me!), are poor proclaimers of that wedding joy.  They rather give the impression that, instead of coming from the Father’s joyful banquet, they have just come from the sheriff who has auctioned off their sins and now are sorry they can’t get them back.  Nietzsche made a true observation when he said ‘You will have to look more redeemed if I am to believe in your Redeemer.”

May God make us good invitations.

There’s a postscript to this parable.  The second part of the parable is, I believe, more for those who’ve accepted the invitation.  We’re not to read it and think, “Well, how could the poor guy have known about the dress code when he was randomly and suddenly asked?”  We’re also not to think “Oh yes, that’s what those outsiders get!”  This one’s for the insiders, I think.  You’ve made the decision to follow Christ.  You make the decision to follow Christ on an ongoing basis.  What does this part of the parable have to say to us?

Simply this.  As someone has said, while this banquet is 'come as you are' – make your way down the highways and byways as you are – it’s not 'remain as you are'.  To live in the kingdom of heaven is to know our need for transformation.  God wants to give us a new set of clothes.  New clothes are exciting.  Fancy clothes.  Getting dressed up, as we do for weddings.  What bride has ever begrudged putting on a fancy gown?  They make TV shows about the search for one and saying yes!  To say yes to this invitation is to accept a new set of clothes.  This is a great image, no?  We get this idea.  We like new clothes.  I can hardly wait to wear something new.  New running shoes.  Keeping them fresh.  There’s a scene in Zechariah where the high priest Joshua is standing before the angel of the Lord and Satan (the accuser) is accusing him and the LORD says “Is not this man a brand plucked from the fire?” and we read “Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel.  The angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Take off his filthy clothes.’  And to him, he said, ‘See, I have taken your guilt away from you, and I will clothe you with festal apparel.’  And I said, ‘Let them put a clean turban on his head.’ So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with the apparel, and the angel of the LORD was standing by.”

We’re to put on new clothes for this banquet. To prepare.  Being at the banquet looks like something in our words and in our actions.  Being at the banquet means opening ourselves up to being clothed anew by God.  By spending time. By praising.  By thanking.  By gathering.  Be showing grace and mercy and love, and justice.  Paul put it like this – “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  Bear with one another, and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you… Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

Coming around this table today is like a rehearsal for the banquet we’re going to.  We’re about to enter a new season.  As we do, may our hearts be ready for God to clothe us in compassion, kindness, meekness, patience, and love.  May the joy of this banquet be ours, and may God make us winsome invitations to it.  May these things be true for all of us.

Amen

In the middle of all this, the question is asked by the leader of this small group of people.  “Who do people say that I am?”  The answers come in.  A charismatic leader.  A wise teacher.  A great prophet.  Then comes the question that is our focus this morning. “And you, who do you say that I am?”  The question of our lives.  Is there a question more important?  One member of the group answers, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  In other words, you are the one who we are putting all our hope on.  You are the one who is worthy of our worship.

Because this is really what we’re talking about when Jesus asks the question – “Who do you say that I am?”  To whom or to what do we look for deliverance/rescue/salvation/fundamental meaning, and purpose?  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with shopping at the Eaton’s Centre and have done so myself.  I have been to Jays and Leafs games and enjoyed myself.  I participate in our democracy by voting at least.  I believe in financial prudence and oversight.  The problem arises when we look to consumerism as our purpose in life.  The problem comes when financial considerations take precedence over every other consideration (like care and compassion, and mercy).  The problem comes when diversion becomes our goal in life, and we are living in order to figure out how to fund our next playcation or wherever it is that we find ourselves diverted.

So we come together again and again to proclaim Jesus as our King.  It’s easy to become diverted when we’re surrounded by symbols that would proclaim something else is King.  This is where Jesus and his followers found themselves in Caesarea Philippi.  Surrounded by symbols that proclaimed where one found deliverance.  It was a town on the southern slopes of Mount Hermon, close to the present-day border with Syria.  It was formerly called Pannia after Pan, the god of nature.  There was a large temple to Pan built into its red cliffs.  It had been renamed after Caesar by Phillip, one of Herod the Great’s sons.  Phillip put his own name in there, too, of course – Caesarea Phillipi – because people like to have things named after themselves.  The city also housed a temple to Caesar, the emperor who was worshipped as divine.  The one to whom everyone looked for salvation.  A giant white marble temple.  In the face of all this, we have this rather ragtag group of Galileans, and this rather remarkable answer given by Peter.

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

It’s not entirely unexpected.  Jesus is called the Messiah in Matthew’s first chapter.  We heard not long ago the story of Jesus stilling a storm and the disciples worshipping him and saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”  Stole Peter’s thunder a little here.  This is not to take anything away from Peter’s role here or his recognition of Christ as the Messiah and Son of God.  Peter is assigned first place here - being named as the first to recognize Jesus as the chosen one.  Peter is named as Jesus talks about the rock on which his church would be built.  There has been much dispute among Christians about what exactly Jesus means here.  (Is Jesus talking about Peter himself when he says, “Upon this rock I will build my church,” or the truth that Peter is proclaiming along with Peter’s trust in that truth?)

What is indisputable, however, is that Matthew’s focus here is what comes after Peter’s confession.  The first question for us is, “Who do you say that I am?”  If we answer with Peter and say, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God”, then the question that follows is, “What kind of Messiah is this?”  What kind of God is this?

He’s the God who is victorious over death.  On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not stand against it.  Whatever we think about papal succession, it is Christ who is our cornerstone.  The stumbling block which the builders rejected has become our cornerstone.  The church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.  This is how Paul describes it to the Ephesians.  We are living stones being built into this edifice that is the church.  This passage marks a turning point in Matthew. Jesus is now looking toward Jerusalem.  Jerusalem is where Jesus will enter the field of battle against death. - connected with and trusting in his Father.  The battle against sin and death, and separation from God, will be fought by Jesus on the cross.  We come back to the cross time and time again, and we will not cease from coming back to the cross.  The gates of hell – the place of separation from God – will not stand against Jesus.    It is on Christ’s victory that the church will be built and endure, knowing that nothing can separate us from God’s love.

The church will have a role in making this known.  To know Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of the living God means to be given a role and a purpose.  To know God and to make God known.  To know Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of the Living God means being enabled by God-with-us to live out that role in our words and actions and thoughts, and attitudes.  All that we are, in other words. “I will give you the keys of the kingdom,” Jesus tells Peter.   It’s why Peter is often depicted (usually in cartoons, it seems) as guarding the gates of Heaven.  This might be good for cartoons, but we take this seriously.  Keys are not just for barring entry, but for unlocking doors.  Peter will go on to unlock doors for thousands of people at Pentecost.  He’ll unlock the door for Cornelius.  At the Jerusalem council in Acts, he’ll unlock the door for Gentile converts.   We are called to unlock the door to the Kingdom of God in the same way, with our actions, with our words.  Decisions are going to be made by Peter and those in the early church.  Binding and losing.  Tying and untying.  In ancient rabbinic literature, binding/loosing signified decision-making.  Decisions will have to be made in the church.  Decisions are made on an ongoing basis in our lives.  They may come at us fast and furious.  We continue to make decisions and must always look to the question What does love call for here?  What does grace call for? What does mercy call for?  Remembering always and reminding one another always that we’re rooted and grounded in Christ and his unsearchable love for us.

So far, so good, right?  Then comes the surprise. The unexpected thing.  “From that time on.”  These words signal a change in Matthew’s Gospel.  “He began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”  This was not supposed to be part of the plan.  No one in 1st-century Judea was looking for a Messiah who would die.  The Messiah was supposed to be raising up an army, restoring the fortunes of Israel and overthrowing foreign rule.  Peter says, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”

Jesus’ response might seem harsh.  I don’t know that he said it harshly, though.  I think he said it with a lot of love.  We remember him asking Peter, “Why do you doubt, oh you of little faith,” while he was holding onto Peter in the middle of a storm.  Jesus turned like he was walking away.  Get behind me.  Jesus doesn’t say “Away with you…” as he said to the actual Satan.    Jesus tells Peter, “Get behind me.’  In other words, get behind me.  Follow me.  Follow me to where I’m going, even though it wasn’t what you were expecting.  Follow me and see how the Son of the Living God deals in sacrificial love.  Not fame.  Not spectacle.  Not masses of adoring crowds.  In shame rather.  The shame of the cross.  Bearing the shame of the world, our shame, there.  This is where this whole journey is headed to friends.  To the cross.  ‘’You are a stumbling block to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”  In human terms, we measure success by numbers.  Chasing ratings, chasing clicks, chasing numbers.   In human terms, we want spectacle.  Spectacle is good, right?  Spectacle shows that something is worthwhile and important, right?

Consider what it means to live an important life.  I want to be living an important life.  Consider what life is in Christ.  What life is in the living/dying/risen/ascended/returning Christ?  We hold all those truths about Jesus together at once.  One thing the death of Christ tells us, friends, is that there is no suffering from which God is absent.  Christ says, “Get behind me, follow me to where I’m going.”  The disciples didn’t follow him to where he was going.  Sometimes we don’t follow Jesus toward suffering.  It’s sometimes hard to come alongside suffering.  There’s no spectacle.  It doesn’t make us famous or renowned to sit with someone who has just received a diagnosis.  Someone who has just lost someone. Someone who is facing so much uncertainty that they can hardly stand it.  We can be assured, though, that God is in that suffering, and that there is no suffering from which God cannot bring life.  Even death.  Christ showed that over Easter weekend.  We said last week that if the good news of Jesus is simply presented and lived as something that benefits us, our faith will be shallow.  Our roots will not be deep.  Our faith may not stand up to persecution or suffering.  The grace of God is no cheap grace.  “Love so amazing, so divine/ Demands my soul, my life, my all” goes the hymn.  We’re talking about giving our lives to Jesus.  Paul doesn’t call himself a slave to Christ for nothing.  All those things we think of as ours – my possessions, my days, my moments, my time – are yours, Lord.  Make my will yours, Lord.  Make everything I do a reflection of you. 

Jesus calls us to follow him in this way every day.  To take up our cross.  “Daily,” Luke adds.  To say “I’m behind you, Jesus” daily.  “Thank you that you are with me.”  To take up our cross.  To deny ourselves.  To lose our lives.  Who would do this?  It doesn’t mean to have a death wish or to efface ourselves.  We’re not talking about self-effacement or self-degradation or self-denigration or making ourselves doormats.  We’re children of the King after all.  We’re talking about claiming our identity as beloved children of God based on the life and death, and resurrection of Christ.  We’re talking about what might be the greatest Christian paradox of them all - losing our lives for Jesus’ sake, and in so doing, to find life.  Losing our lives for the sake of calling Jesus “Lord” and meaning it, and in so doing finding life.  For some Christians, this has meant actually losing their lives for Jesus’ sake.  What might it mean for us?  Dying to our need to control, to determine outcomes, to have things our own way, etc., more examples?

Why would this be something we want?  Because from this death comes life. Jesus will tell his followers three times what’s going to happen.  It’s interesting that nobody notes the resurrection part.  This is the second half of the equation, however.  Maybe it’s not so strange, though.  As one writer puts it, resurrection “had to be experienced to be believed.”   Once it’s experienced, though, look at what happens.  The question then becomes, are you experienced?  Have you experienced resurrection?  Are you experiencing new life in the risen Christ?  This is our invitation, and it is before us daily.  This is the invitation that Jesus extends when he says, “Get behind me.”  It is in dying with Christ and experiencing the power of the resurrected Christ that we find life!  Do you know what I’m talking about?  If you do share your stories.  How have you experienced new life?  How are you experiencing new life?  Open the doors to the Kingdom for others.  People of God have gathered all over the world to celebrate and proclaim these truths today.  Let us resolve to say with Peter every day, “To whom would we go?  You have the words of eternal life?”  Let us say with Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”  Let us get behind the Messiah, the Christ, the son of the living God.  May this be true for us all.

The more difficult news which this parable describes is the sense of failure and rejection, and disappointment.  I like to call this the Parable of the Soils.  There are four places the seeds land.  Three of them result in failure, in withering.  Jesus is setting up a line of delineation here between good and bad soil.  The good news is that in the reign of God, what may be produced in us and through us is abundance – 100 fold, 60 fold, 30 fold!  The reign of God manifests itself in our lives in ways we never thought possible.  The power of God at work in us is able to accomplish far more than we could ever ask or imagine!  Let’s ask for God’s help as we hear God’s word to us today.

Someone has said this about the parable of the soils: “God’s grace is no cheap grace: you must pay for it with all you are and all you have.”  At the same time, “It’s an exciting thing to be a Christian.  It always goes the limit.”  I agree it stretches us.  Growing in the love of God is a wonderfully exciting thing.  Growth can also be a painful thing, of course, and we don’t talk about growing pains for nothing.  So I put this thought before us as we begin – “The love of God/our love for God is no cheap love; I am called to pay for it with all I am and all I have.” Hold onto this as we go along here.

“And he told them many things in parables.”  Jesus has used parable-type language early in Matthew’s Gospel (think of the wise and the foolish man building their houses on rock and sand).  Here in chapter 13, we have, for the first time in Matthew, a group of parables.  In the first two parables – this one and the parables of the weeds among the wheat which follow, Jesus contrasts two things.  In this case, good or bad soil.  Jesus is describing the line between understanding and not understanding; the line (as he puts it) between knowing or having been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and not perceiving, hearing and not listening, nor understanding.  And so we pray to be given hearts to understand.

This is understanding.  It’s not simply mental comprehension.  “But as for what is sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit…”  This is what we want, yes?  “Bear fruits worthy of repentance!” was the cry of John the Baptist.  May this be the thing for which we long.  To be kingdom of God people.  To be sermon on the mount people.  We can do this, God helping us!  Understanding – receiving and perceiving God’s word in our hearts doesn’t come cheap.  Remember that seeds need to die to produce fruit.  Seeds need to die in order that something new might come about. Jesus told his followers very truly, “… unless a grain of wheat fall into the earth and dies, it remains a single seed,” and I don’t believe Jesus was just talking about himself. Let us be challenged by Jesus’ words.  I have been challenged already in these weeks after Easter, I pray you have too.  We don’t just listen to Jesus' words and sit with them and pray with them simply so we can feel good about ourselves or simply learn a moral lesson for the day. 

May Jesus' words cut us to the heart.  May Jesus grant us understanding.  Understanding does not come easily.  This is a parable of separation or delineation, and we do well to acknowledge that line of separation between understanding /non-understanding runs through each of us.  But we’re listening, thanks be to God.  “Listen!” is how Jesus starts, and we say, “Yes, Lord.  Our desire is to come to an ever-increasing heart understanding of what you are teaching, and what your Spirit of Christ does in our hearts.”  Again, this goes beyond an intellectual understanding or presumptuously saying, “Oh yes, I already know what’s going on here.”  Someone has described parables like this: “Their significance points again and again to everyday life: they ask to be lived, not to be grasped by the intellect.”  Parables ask to be lived.

Today’s parable was told in a particular context, too.  We said before Easter that Matthew 11-12 is marked by a mixed reaction to Jesus.  Everything from wanting to kill him, to ignoring him, to following him.  How is Jesus’ invitation going to be received?  Why isn’t Jesus’ invitation more widely received, whether we ask this about others or ourselves?  This parable describes three ways the word of the Kingdom of Heaven is not successful, and one way in which it is successful.   The seed has a 25% success rate.  It makes us ask the question, “What does success mean in the Kingdom of Heaven?”  Is it crowds?  Is it a large number of people?  Look at the crowds!  The crowds are so great that Jesus has to get into a boat while the whole crowd stood on the beach.  Jesus doesn’t say, “Look at this!  Look at this great number of people – this Kingdom thing is really taking off!  Give yourselves a round of applause, disciples!  Such success!”

What is success in the Kingdom of Heaven?  Is it numbers?  This is conventional wisdom, no?  If something or someone is attracting large crowds, it must be good, right?  The more likes, the higher your click-through rate, the better, right?

Jesus looks at the crowd.  Jesus looks at us.  He begins to speak in parables.  We’ll never in this age come to an end of understanding these things.  Jesus wants to shake us up.  Jesus wants to shake and stir our imaginations as he did in the Sermon on the Mount. 

He began to speak in parables.  “Listen!  A sower went out to sow.” The seed is the word of the kingdom.  Seeds are going everywhere.   The sower sows recklessly and with abandon, regardless of how the seed is being received.

What does this have to tell us about how we spread the word of the kingdom?  “What is the word of the kingdom?” you ask.  It begins with the invitation from Jesus.  “Follow me.”  “I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” In Jesus is life and love.  How else might we say it?  How might we live it out?  We said recently that if we’re ambassadors of Christ and living letters of Christ, and if Christ is the living Word of God, then we are in some way the word of God to the world, which is sown anywhere and everywhere, regardless of reception and regardless of risk.  Regardless of reception.  Be peace to everyone, regardless of how the message is received.  Speak peace to everyone, regardless of how the message is received. 

There are four results for the seeds, and I think we do well to get introspective on this.  I think we do well to consider our reception of the word, our understanding, our fruit-bearing.  This is not to make us feel guilty or ashamed.  It’s to help us realize our need for the one who is telling the parable.  The one.  The one who loves us the same way he sows - recklessly and with abandon.  The one who is holding on to us.  The one who has promised I am with you always, even to the end of the age.  

Some seeds fell on the path.  The birds came and ate them up.  When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path.  There’s nothing wrong with paths, per se.  There is nothing wrong with streets, highways, byways.  They help us get places.  The thing is, you need to get off them.  Life in the fast lane is no life.  Life in the fast lane.  Surely make you lose your mind. Everything all the time.  Frenetic activity.  Frantic activity even. It’s no way to live.  We heard last week about being reminded of the promises of God in nature.  Stopping to notice the birds and the flowers.  Even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like this.  I know we all have things to do. The call is to get off the busy, full-of-distractions/diversions path.  Stop.  Rest.  Come away to a deserted place and rest awhile.  The tasks will get done.  I will live in the open space, where water flows with love and grace. What sort of attention are we paying the word of God?  Do we rest with it, or do we take it in small bites on our way to our next activity, the way we eat fast food in the car?  Do we welcome God’s word into our days, or is it more like an unwelcome visitor for whom we pretend we’re not home? Paths can be beaten down, and it's a wearisome thing to be beaten down.  Paths can be covered with cement and hardened, just like hearts. 

As for what is sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arise on account of the world, that person immediately falls away.  The walk with Christ is a walk, a long one.  Eugene Peterson calls it “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.”  It’s a long-term thing.  A lifelong thing, and it never gets old.  I know we are so into instant results.  High speed.  No lag, no buffering, no waiting. Instant gratification.  “What’s in this for me?” we ask.  Too often, the message of Christ is presented by us primarily in terms of how it benefits you.  I heard a preacher say once, “Wouldn’t you like to get in on that deal?” as if we were selling something. We’re not selling anything.  This does not mean that life in Christ does not benefit us.  Life in Christ is life lived as we were created by God to live.  For now.  Forever.  It’s something to give our lives to.  Sometimes literally, as in “I would die for this,” at which point some say, “This is not what I signed up for,” and fall away.  We want to be deeply rooted, do we not?  The wondrous thing is that in giving ourselves to our King and his Kingdom, we know peace, we know joy, we know hope, we know grace. 

As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing.  It’s a hard thing to be rich in the kingdom of heaven.  It’s not impossible thanks be to God, but it’s not easy.  The difficulty is not just for individuals, but it can be difficult for entire societies. Stanley Hauerwas, US theologian and ethicist, has this to say about the church in the West:

“…it is hard to imagine any text more relevant to the situation of churches in the West. Why we are dying seems very simple. It is hard to be a disciple and be rich. Surely, we may think, it cannot be that simple, but Jesus certainly seems to think that it is that simple. The lure of wealth and the cares of the world produced by wealth quite simply darken and choke our imaginations... The gospel becomes a formula for “giving our lives meaning” without judgment.

Too often, those who propose strategies to recover the lost status and/or membership of the church do so hoping that people can be attracted to become members of the church without facing the demands of being a disciple of Jesus.”

We’ve heard about three degrees of failure, and we end with three degrees of success.  Three degrees of grace.  Three degrees of fruit.  “Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.  Let anyone with ears to hear listen.”  Listen and understand.  But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it.  Again, not in a purely intellectual way but in such a way that the words of the Living Word are lived out in and through us.  “Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” said the Baptist, and we say, “Make us good soil, Lord.  I want to be good soil.”  Do you want this?  Let the fruit be our success. Let love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control be the measure of our success, whether it’s a hundredfold, sixty, or thirty.  This is a prayer for the most seasoned of disciples (which I’m increasingly feeling like myself, I have to say, age-wise, and God bless our elders and all those who know about the long obedience in the same direction).  It can also be a prayer for someone who hasn’t made that step.  Someone who hasn’t yet said, “I want to follow you and call you Lord and give my life to you and your kingdom’s cause.”  Someone who doesn’t even know yet what all that means.  Donald Miller, in his book Blue Like Jazz, writes of a young friend named Penny who tells him of her story of coming to follow Jesus.  One of the parts of her story was reading through the Gospel of Matthew with a friend.  This is what she tells him: “Yeah.  There is a part in Matthew where Jesus talks about soil, and He is going to throw some seed on the soil, and some of the seed is going to grow because the soil is good, and some of the seed isn’t because it fell on rock or the soil wasn’t as good.  And when I heard that, Don, everything in me leaped up, and I wanted so bad to be the good soil.  That is all I wanted, to be the good soil!  I was like, Jesus, please let me be the good soil!”  There’s more to Penny’s store,y and you can borrow the book from me anytime.  In the meantime, friends, may her prayer be on the hearts of each and every one with eyes to see and ears to hear.  May this be true for us all. Amen

These are Jesus’ words for us today.   If you ever wonder or anyone has ever asked you what kind of relevance a book written thousands of years ago might have for today.  Consider these quotes starting with a current world leader: “This is a great time to get rich, richer than ever before.”  “We’re going to become so rich, you’re not gonna know where to spend all that money.”

“Love?  Love fades away. But things?  Things are forever.” Aziz Ansari as Tom in Parks and Recreation, 2013

“Lunch is for wimps.”  “Greed is good.”  Michael Douglas as Gordon Gecko in Wall Street 1987

“They do not rejoice in what they have, no matter how much it is, so much as they lament what they still lack.  Their soul is eaten away with cares as they compete in the struggle for success.” St Basil the Great, 4th cent

“Wealth, even without its own altar, is the most honoured God among the Romans.”  Roman poet Juvenal, 2^{nd century}.

Into the midst of this speaks Jesus.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Someone has said that being a disciple of Jesus, learning Jesus, is to be cultural atheists, “disavowing the myriad gods of popular life.”  I was speaking recently about prophetic action, and I’m feeling this!  Maybe the beard has me feeling more prophet-like.  I heard or read once (I’m sure I didn’t dream it) of a preacher who stood in front of the church, took out a $100 bill and burned it, saying, “We reject your gods!”  I decided not to do this, what with the fire code and thinking, “Well, that $100 could have been given away.”  The point is well made, though the question is ever before us.  What do we treasure?  In what or whom do we trust?  Do we treasure our TFSAS, chequing accounts, real estate, and safety deposit boxes?  Not that there’s anything wrong with any of these things, of course.  The love of them becomes a problem.  Trusting in them for our well-being and for our good becomes a problem.

We are confronted in this passage with two very different views of things or money.  What does conventional wisdom have to tell us about money and stuff, and where is that getting us?  The question that Jesus is putting before us is one of allegiance.  What do we treasure?  We are talking in these Eastertide weeks about a re-oriented heart – the centre of our will and volition, the centre of our being.  He’s talking about his followers living with a kingdom orientation, and he’s using language to shake us up.  Language that asks us to imagine what living with a kingdom orientation that might look like.  This is what we want.  When we pray “Your kingdom come,”  part of what we mean is “right here!” (points to heart)

We talked about Jesus speaking of antitheses last week – You have heard that it was said/but I say to you. “Opposites.  Here, Jesus lays out the difference between treasuring money/stuff on one hand and Kingdom of God values on the other.  Jesus speaks of two treasures, two types of eyes, and two masters.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.”

What do we treasure?  Someone has said that nothing enslaves more than that which we think we cannot live without.  What is the thing that we think we cannot live without?  “What are we striving for here?” asks Jesus.  Things that get eaten by moth or rust?  Things that may be stolen or lose their “value” when the bottom drops out of the market?  Things that in the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Jesus (and we must never forget who is speaking these words) take on eternal significance?  Grace.  Mercy.  Open-handed living.  Forgiveness.  Compassion.   Note too that Jesus is not saying where your heart is will determine what you treasure, but that where your treasure is, that is where your heart will be.  The question for us is “What do we treasure?”

Next, Jesus speaks of the healthy eye versus the unhealthy eye.  The sound eye versus the unsound eye.  The single eye versus the unsingle eye.  “The eyes are the lamp of the body,” Jesus says.  He’s reflecting an ancient idea that people saw because of light which came from the body and out of our eyes.  The idea is that living in a Kingdom orientation means that what we see is illuminated by the light of Jesus, which is life.  We talked last week as seeing everyone we encounter in the light of God’s love – people who are made in the image of God and loved by God.  This means not seeing or valuing people by how much money they have.  This is completely antithetical in a world that so often judges people as units of production and consumption and values them accordingly.  The other way to see this is to think of the eyes as windows to the soul.  Let our eyes be healthy or single or sound.  Let our eyes be windows into a soul that that undivided and lit up by the love of God. divided heart, this is lit up by the love of God.

I say undivided because you gotta serve somebody, and you can’t serve two.   NHL and NBA playoffs are on right now for those interested. If a player is traded and the team that traded him or her meets their new team in the playoffs, it can not be a question of divided loyalty for that player.  You can’t serve God and wealth.  The quest that should govern our lives is the quest for God’s reign in our lives and God’s reign in the world.  Lord, help us to be undivided in our loyalty to you and your kingdom and service to you and your kingdom.  Oftentimes, it’s the prophets who speak most bluntly and pointedly.  We remember John the Baptist and his “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”  We remember the words of the prophet Elijah and what great imagery this is, and these words were not just meant for the people of Israel – they’re meant for me and they’re meant for you: “How long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him, but if Baal, then follow him.”  How long will we go limping with two different opinions?  If the LORD is God, then follow him, but if wealth, follow it.  God grant us the will to follow and the will to make our following of Christ look like something different in our lives.  It is not for nothing that Jesus talks in a parable about the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choking the word of God.

Speaking of cares, we have this lovely passage, which I hope puts us right in the middle of the scene as Jesus speaks on the side of that Galilean mountain.  They say it’s good for us to be out in nature, and no wonder.  The truths that we are able to grasp more deeply in God’s good creation.  I like to think that Jesus pointed to birds or maybe even one bird that was flying about, maybe landing near him.  I like to think that Jesus pointed to the wildflowers that were growing around where he and the people were sitting.  Jesus wants to shake us up.  Jesus wants to stir our imaginations.  It can be hard in the city to be reminded of God’s providence and care for nature.  I hope we can get to some grass or a park if we’re able.  Single-hearted devotion to God and service to God lead to trust in God. Listen to the words:

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink,[a] or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?[b] 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?

You of little faith.  We remember those words spoken to Peter as Jesus was holding onto him on the stormy sea.  I think we can hear those words spoken gently to us from the one who said he is gentle and humble in heart.  I hear those words spoken with a lot of compassion as Jesus says, “Look around!”  You want to worry about what you’re going to eat?  Look at these birds that the Father feeds.  Are you not of more value than them?  Remember that not one such bird falls to the ground outside the Father’s care.  You want worry about what you’ll wear?  Look at the beauty of these flowers and know that no designer could make a dress to compare.  Seek the kingdom first and its righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.  We’re never left alone in these commands.  This is not something Jesus is calling for us step into through our own wills.  Like the non-retaliation and love of those who may seek us ill that was commanded last week, this striving for and allegiance to the reign of the risen Christ above all else is impossible for us to do on our own.  Someone has put it like this:

“Possessed by possessions, we discover that we cannot will our way free of our possessions. But if we can be freed, our attention may be grasped by that which is so true, so beautiful, we discover we have been dispossessed. To seek first the righteousness of the kingdom of God is to discover that that for which we seek is given, not achieved.”

Or as I would put it – We are able to do what is beyond us because, in Christ Jesus, God has done something for us which was beyond us.  God has brought us back to himself.   God has forgiven us.  In Christ, God calls us his children.  Jesus calls us brothers and sisters.

The call not to worry or be anxious is not about situations like clinical or chronic depression or anxiety.  Someone has put it like this:

“What is being prohibited is the energy-draining, chronic, paralyzing anxiety that is futile and even self-destructive. Not only does it not “add a single hour to your span of life” (Matt. 6:27), it sucks the life right out of you. It shortens lives and makes what life we do have a fretful misery. Instead of expending ourselves in needless, unproductive, debilitating anxiety, we are invited to trust in God and seek first God’s reign and righteousness.”

There’s another way to know life in Jesus.  Jesus is not saying don’t plan.  He’s not saying don’t look after others because God will.  He’s not saying don’t work.

He’s saying, remember what’s first.  Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, all these things will be given to you as well.

Let us not miss the moments that we are in and have them ruined by fear of an unknown future.  You might consider that a banal platitude, but as David Foster Wallace once said, “in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance.”  Life or death.  Blessings or curses.  God or wealth.  The choice is before us every day, my friends.  We’re talking about a radical reorientation of our inner being.  We’re going to come to the table now, where the invitation to meet the risen Christ is here, as his body is not dependent on how much we can afford.  The price of admission has been paid.

This will be the last time we look at the Sermon on the Mount for a while, but do read it over and come back to it.  Let us be people who strive for, who seek after poverty of spirit, gentleness, mercy, justice and righteousness, peace, reconciliation, faithfulness, truth, love even for those who hate us, fellowship with our Father.  That we may be children of our Father in heaven.  All of this in and through the one who loved us even unto death, who is risen, who is with us, whose Spirit lives in us, who is coming again to make all things new.  Thanks be to God for the indescribable gift of Son and Spirit, through whom we have peace.

Amen, and peace be with you all, dear friends.

One of the things that I lament a lot these days is the base level of so much public conversation.  The insults.  The mocking.  The scorn.  The hate even.  In the digital realm.  On the streets.  In real life.  This news conference was so refreshing.  We know how combative press conferences can be.  How filled with talking points and not really answering the question, etc.  These two men described how one may have inner peace through knowing Jesus.  They spoke about Matthew 25 – welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry.  They spoke about the importance of personal encounters and the belief that when we encounter one another, we are meeting those who are made in the image of God and beloved by God.

It's refreshing, and I pray that we will be refreshed and renewed as we go back to Matthew.  Watching Jesus and listening to Jesus.  Learning Jesus.  We have proclaimed “Christ is risen/He is risen indeed!”  We want to keep on proclaiming this great truth in our words and with our deeds.  We want to know what it looks like to live out a new life. 

We remember the last words of Jesus to his disciples – “Go to all the world baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, making disciples and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”  If we’re going to be able to teach things, whether it be in our actions or in our words, we need to be learning them ourselves.  We’re now in the period of the traditional church calendar called Eastertide – 50 days between Easter and Pentecost Sunday, where we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit in a special way.  A time to sit with the reality of the risen Christ.  A time to hear God speak to us.  How welcome they are!

These words that we’ve heard this morning are from the Sermon on the Mount.  Matthew 5-7.  Jesus is preaching.  Preaching can have a bad reputation, I know.  Blame us preachers for this, though.  Jesus is speaking words of life here, and I pray all preachers are doing the same (starting with myself).  We’ve heard about a Kingdom where things are upside down.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.  Jesus has talked of how his followers are to be like salt and light.  Flavouring.   Illuminating. 

We’re in the final part of the first section of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus sets up six antitheses.  You have heard that it was said…. But I say to you…  Jesus speaks of anger, of adultery, of divorce, of speaking the truth plainly.  Finally, he speaks of retaliation and enemies.  Which is where we are this morning.  The Sermon on the Mount is the most famous, arguably, of Jesus’ teachings, and there have been different ways it’s been interpreted.  Some have said that the ethics in the sermon are for priests or religious professionals in general.  Some have said that they’re there to show us how impossible it is for us to meet them and so point us to God’s grace.  We need God’s grace most definitely!  Some may look at them literally and say, “Put your eye out?  Cut your hand off?  Ridiculous!” and so dismiss the whole thing entirely. 

We want to take Jesus’ words seriously.  We talked about things getting shaken up on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  Christ’s death and resurrection as an epoch-shaking/shaping event.  Jesus uses language here to shake us up. Is Jesus advocating in our text this morning that people who are being sued walk around without any clothes?  Is Jesus advocating that I don’t take any intervention if I see someone being assaulted on the street because I’m not supposed to resist an evildoer?  I believe the Word of God, and I endeavour my dear friends to take the Bible seriously.  Every word of it. Sometimes I’ve been accused of being overly serious, but I’m a fun guy, as one of my basketball heroes once said.  In his sermon this morning, Jesus is describing what a re-orientation of our hearts looks like.  It’s open-ended and goes beyond simply performing a list of outward requirements. 

To take Jesus’ words here seriously means that we won’t read them in such a way that we turn them into another list of requirements.  It means we won’t read them in such a way that leads to fanaticism and/or unworkability.  It also means we won’t dismiss them as purely figurative or as mere suggestions from Jesus.  Life in the risen Jesus is learning a whole new way to walk; learning a whole new way to see; learning a whole new heart.  Learning Jesus.  Learning what it means to be children of God.  Learning what it means to take on to bear the family resemblance with God as our Father and Christ as our brother.  The new age of the Kingdom of heaven has dawned.  The Kingdom of Heaven is here.  At the same time, we wait for its fulfillment.  Jesus is coming back, and at the same time, Jesus is with us just as he promised.  We want to grow into an ever fuller understanding of what living in the reign of God looks like. Here’s what someone has said and this is good: “Those who are to belong to God’s new realm must move beyond literal observance of rules, however good and scriptural, to a new consciousness of what it means to please God, one which penetrates beneath the surface level of rules to be obeyed to a more radical openness to knowing and doing the underlying will of ‘your Father in heaven.’”

We start with retaliation.  This is a good one for us these days, I think.  The question we must always be asking ourselves is, “Are my norms based on societal norms, or are my norms based on the character of God?”  Societal norms may say I need to get my own back, particularly if you’re part of or a descendant of a shame/honour culture (and trust me, I know this very well).  You have offended my honour, I must get my honour back.  Practically speaking, if you cut me off in traffic, I must get ahead of you so I can then cut you off.  Seriously, it happens.  An eye for an eye – that’s the law.  That’s the requirement.  It was a law designed to limit compensation for a wrong done. By Jesus’ time, it mainly meant limiting monetary compensation in a legal matter.  If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other one toward them.  Does this mean I shouldn’t defend myself if I’m physically attacked, or does it mean that if I’m insulted as I would be with a backhanded slap on my right cheek, I don’t need to avenge myself of the insult.  I don’t need to try and reclaim my honour.

In whom is my honour after all?  My honour is in the risen Christ!  What might this mean for online communication, comment sections, message boards?  Conventional wisdom says protect your own.  Protect your assets at all costs, and if someone has wronged you, don’t take the law into your own hands; take them to court.   We don’t need to try and explain these words of Jesus away – they’re meant to shock us.  They’re meant to fire our imaginations in terms of what it might look like for us to live as followers of Christ in the world.  Followers of the one who had no need to respond to insults because his honour was from his Father. 

The question is always  “What does love call for here?”  “His law is love and his gospel is peace,” as the great carol “Oh Holy Night” puts it.  I love that line.  There could be no end of speaking about this, and I hope we have some good conversations around it.  Jesus uses open-ended examples (which are also open to interpretation) not to substitute one list of rules with another, but to show that surpassing righteousness has more to do with an inner disposition than ticking off boxes.  It’s not about getting my own back or protecting my own in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Jesus is talking about giving us a whole new heart, which results in a whole new way of being in the world. 

The world which God loved in this way, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have everlasting life.  That we might have fullness of life.  Life now.  Life always. 

God, who makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. God doesn’t separate us into camps.  Who are our enemies?  People who wish me ill or actively work for my harm?  Jesus says stop thinking in terms of us and them.  Our world is full of us and them thinking, and it’s getting worse and worse.  Stop it, says Jesus, and we do very well to pray the words of the hymn, “teach me to love as thou dost love.”  Teach me to love as you love.  “And do as thou wouldst do.”  And do as you would do, Lord. Funnily enough, I read an article about the three keywords to improve one’s emotional intelligence.  I said, “I have to know what these words are!”  Do you know what they were?  I love you.  Not necessarily to be spoken aloud, as that could get awkward, as the kids say.  In every interaction, to have these words continually on the tip of our hearts and to add to them, “God loves this person.”  “What does love call for here?” is the question we must always have at the top of our hearts, and by hearts, I mean the centre of our being, our volition, our will.  When we’re talking about love here, we’re not talking about warm and fuzzy feelings toward those who actively wish and work for our ill.  I mean actively working for their good.  “Ah,” some may say, “Very wise!  In this way, you turn them and get them to come over to your side or your way of thinking!”  This may be the case, but this isn’t the reason that Jesus gives.  Why is this Jesus’ command? 

So that you may be children of your Father in heaven.  So that our ways are ever coming to reflect God’s ways.  So that, children of the King, we are ever more coming to bear the family resemblance.  So that people might look at us and see children of God, whether they realize it or not.  One day they might.  Who knows what the future will bring, but we do know that God’s word won’t return to God without accomplishing that for which God purposes it, and if Jesus is the Word of Life and we’re ambassadors of Jesus or living letters of Jesus then we’re in some way God’s word to the world.

I’m talking about actively seeking the good of others just as God in Christ has actively sought and actively seeks and will actively seek nothing but good for us.  Our Father wills nothing but good for us.  Why would we consider doing anything else?

This radical reorientation toward those who don’t like us can apply to many different people in many different ways.  Jesus speaks very practically in this way, though.  “Pray for those who persecute you,” he says.  Bring them with us, in other words, into God’s presence.  When we see people in the light of God’s love, we can’t help but see them differently.

Don’t get to be thinking too much of ourselves when we love those who love us.  “Respect me and I’ll respect you” doesn’t cut it in the Kingdom of God.  “Even Gentiles do that!” says Jesus.  If we greet only our brothers and sisters, what more are we doing than others?  Now, the good greeting, the good hello,  is important, and you know I’m always going on about that.  Jesus is going beyond merely saying hello here, though.  Even greeting in those days was a desire for the other person’s good – Peace be with you.  Shalom.  The ancient Jewish greeting.  The ancient Christian greeting.  Peace be with you.  How might I actively work for your peace?

Because it’s a new kind of family.  A family that is called to be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect.  Not in an impossible-to-follow morally sense, but in a “Christ has done it” sense – therefore let us be perfected, completed in Christ.  This is going to look like something.   As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it - “The followers are the visible community of faith; their discipleship is a visible act which separates them from the world—or it is not discipleship. And discipleship is as visible as light in the night, as a mountain in the flatland.”  We’ll spend one more week with Jesus on the mountain.  In the meantime, may God continue to teach us and help us to love as God loves, and do as God does.  May this be true for us all.  Amen

And so we consider the question.  Who is going to save us?  What is going to save us?  Are we beyond saving?

Assuming, of course, that we think we need saving at all.  Assuming we need help.  We may think we’re doing quite alright, thanks very much.  The status quo might be very appealing.  The question we continue to ask is “How well is the status quo going?”  Jesus came to turn the status quo upside down (rightside up).  To follow Jesus is to refuse to rest content with the status quo, including the status quo within.  Jesus comes to Jerusalem, and he’s engaged in prophetic action.  Prophetic action is an unusual attention-getting act which demonstrates truth from God.  It’s Jeremiah breaking a pot to signify that Jerusalem would fall because the people had forsaken God.  Prophets tell it like it is.  Remember John the Baptist – “Bear fruits worthy of repentance!” and sometimes they show it like it is.  Prophets tend not to be popular.  They tend to get killed, even. 

Our prophet and priest and king is riding into Jerusalem.

As we do each year, we’re marking Palm Sunday.  Why do we do this?  This whole scene that we read this morning is filled with prophetic action on Jesus’ part.   You know what a big believer I am in symbolic action, whether it’s lighting a candle or gathering around the table to which Jesus invites us.  In our story, this morning, Jesus engages in prophetic action.  We’re going to look at two scenes, one involving a couple of donkeys and the other involving some tables. Let’s ask for God’s help as we begin.

“Who is this?” the people ask.  What sort of man is this Jesus? What sort of King is this?  We find that he is the one who enters the City of David on a donkey along with her colt.  Not even two full-sized donkeys but a donkey and her colt.  There is little regal about riding a donkey.  Jordan 2010.  Nicole and I were in Jordan, visiting Petra with a McMaster Divinity College study tour of Israel and Jordan.  Life changing.  At the end of the day, we engaged a Bedouin donkey-taxi service to take us back to the hotel.  I was worried that the donkey wouldn’t be able to hold me, at which point the leader of the group called out, “Get this man a mule!”  The donkey did his job, and I actually love donkeys.

This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”  Now, our NRSV Bible has used the word humble here to match up with the Hebrew version of Zephaniah, but the word that Matthew actually uses here is from the Greek version of the OT (the Septuagint).  The word is gentle. 

Which must make us think back to those words we heard two weeks ago.  That lovely invitation – “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.”  This is the one who holds onto us when our faith wanes and says, “You have little faith, why did you doubt?” as he is holding onto us.

 This is the man who is on a donkey walking down the road, as the song we sang earlier put it.  Freedom was very much on people’s minds.  It was Passover time – the biggest festival of them all.  A remembrance of God setting a people free.  The city was thronged with people.  Anywhere from 250,000 to 2.5 million people, according to estimates.  Jesus has once again come down from the mountain, from Mount Olivet just east of the city where many would have stayed throughout Passover.  At the end of Matthew 20, we read of Jesus healing two blind men.  This is what Jesus does.  They regained their sight and followed him.  There was no longer any need to tell them to keep quiet about it or not call him things like Son of David for fear of the clash with authorities to which this kind of talk might lead.  The time for the clash is here as Jesus takes his mission public in a whole new way.   The time for talk is over, you might say.  Of course, there will still be talk.

Jesus tells his followers to go into Bethpage, where they will find a mother donkey and her colt.  Jesus is in control of the situation. The symbolism is rich.  A never-been-ridden colt because rookie animals like that were used for sacred purposes.  Branches and cloaks on the ground because this is how you greeted a king.  The king riding in on a warhorse, having vanquished his people’s enemies and at long last given them freedom…

We like that image.  It’s conventional wisdom.  Which makes me want to pose another question.  Where is freedom to be found?  Where in our world do we consider freedom to be found?  Clarity?  Financial security?  National security?  Is it to be found in the ability of the individual to pursue whatever he or she feels led to pursue?  Are my individual rights and freedoms the thing that takes precedence over all else?

Is it to be found in the security of our religious rituals? Hang on to that one.

Jesus comes into Jerusalem at the time of year when religious and nationalist fervour is at an all-time high and dreams of freedom are at an all-time high.  Many of us are familiar of 1st-century Jewish expectations of the Messiah.  One who would free them from Roman rule by force of arms.  When you’re living under oppressive occupation, it’s understandable, of course, it is.  At the same time, you have people in this crowd who are with Jesus, going ahead of him and following behind him, and they’re shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”  The question that was posed by John the Baptist is being answered by these followers of Jesus, and no, they didn’t fully understand it all (and it’s not like we do either), but they were calling out, “Save now!”  Son of David.  King.  Mounted on a donkey.  The Prince of Peace coming into the city whose name literally is City of Peace. named after peace, who is going to show that the way to freedom is going to look like something different than what we were expecting.    

The question of the day is, “What will save you?”  It’s “In what or whom do you find your peace?”

The response that Matthew is inviting us into, the answer for so many, the answer for me, is this man who is riding into town on a donkey with her colt.  This man whose symbolic action pointed beyond the symbol, just as it had with prophets before him.  “Who is this?” the people asked as the whole city was in turmoil.  Something seismic is happening here. “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee,” came the answer.  This is the prophet par excellence.  This is the King par excellence.  Why do we do this year after year?  To come before the humble/gentle king and to say “Save now!” because I don’t know about you, but I find myself consistently and constantly in need of saving. 

What sort of man is this?  The man who is going to take the biggest symbolic action in the history of the world.  The one who is going to show what the love of God looks like on the cross, which we’ll remember in a special way on Friday.  We remember all the time of course.  He’s the man who is going to bring us back to God.  The man who will show that freedom is not to be found fundamentally in getting our own way.  The man who will provide the way for us to live in communion with and in worship of the living God – the compassionate one, the merciful one, the just one, the gracious one, the loving one.

So let’s spread our branches and cloaks out on the road, metaphorically at least.  Let us take our palm branches home and hang them on our doors or wherever we keep them to remind us of our King, who is gentle and humble in heart.

Jesus’ prophetic action does not stop with his entrance into the city on a donkey along with her colt.  “Then Jesus entered the temple…”  We’ve talked about Jesus' role as king and Jesus' role as prophet.  Jesus, our Prophet par excellence.  Jesus our King par excellence.  Here we have Jesus as priest par excellence – or our Great High Priest, as he is called.  The one who not simply mediates the presence of God but is the presence of God.  The one who purifies our worship.  We don’t worship God through any goodness of our own.  The one through whom we may approach God. This purification is again seen symbolically in Jesus’ actions.  The temple was a huge place.  It took up a lot of land.  The Court of the Gentiles was a large place and would have been thronged with people.  There’s no reason to believe that the actions of one man would have disrupted things any more than my tipping over an apple display in the produce section of the supermarket would disrupt the activities of the supermarket (though the people around me would be disrupted).  Jesus’ coming causes seismic change, and he is acting prophetically, and a disruption is occurring in the temple.  This is not to say that religious practices are bad – there are religious practices which I carry out religiously.  This is not to say that Jesus is signifying here that the temple or the sacrificial system was bad.  He came to fulfill, not to destroy.  He came to be the person to whom the temple pointed – the one who would mediate between humanity and God, the sacrifice which would bring all things back to God, the presence of God, and the one in whom his followers would be called temples. 

“Then Jesus entered the temple, and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and those who sold doves.” There are a couple of ways to interpret what Jesus is doing.  The first thing is the possibility that people making the journey to sacrifice at the Temple are being ripped off.  It’s not explicit in the text, but it happened.  Jesus may be protesting unfair business practices on the part of currency traders or those charging a premium for doves sold inside the Temple (kind of like how a hot-dog is much more expensive in the stadium than at a street vendor outside the stadium and no outside food is allowed).  There’s merit to this, and the Bible is clear on speaking out against economic exploitation. 

We may be saying at this point, though, what does all this talk about the Temple and sacrifices and religious practices have to do with us today?  There’s no more Temple and no more need to sacrifice after all.  What do Jesus’ prophetic table-flipping actions and words have to say to us today?  The key is to look to the prophet whom Jesus quotes.  Jeremiah.   There’s something else going on here, though, and the key to it is looking at what Jesus says. “It is written,” says Jesus, “My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you are making it a den of robbers.”  The original line is from Jeremiah 7:11 – “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?  You know, I too am watching, says the Lord.”  Hear what comes before this.  Let’s brace ourselves a little bit:

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah, you that enter these gates to worship the Lord. 3 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. 4 Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’

5 For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, 6 if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, 7 then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors for ever and ever.

8 Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. 9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are safe!’—only to go on doing all these abominations?

There was a disconnect, you see, between what the people of God were professing with their mouths and in their outward worship of God and what they were doing. 

I know I said let’s brace ourselves, but let us also remember the good news we have heard today.  Your king is coming.  Your King has come, and he’s gentle and humble of heart, and in him, we find forgiveness and transformation.  So this Holy Week, friends, if we haven’t been doing it already (and if we have, let us continue), let us examine ourselves and mourn how the things that Christ announced and lived out are not lived out by us.  Let us ask the question, in what ways does my life not conform to my religious profession?  Do I use my faith as a way to become entrenched in my own views and ways rather than being remade by it?  This is not to beat ourselves up. Remember, the one we worship invites us to come to him to find rest for our souls.  Remember, the one we worship said that the poor in spirit (those who realize their poverty of spirit and need for Christ) are blessed, in a good position, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  We come to Jesus with the cry of Peter, “Lord, save me!”  Lor,d make me whole.   Lor,d make me new. 

We do all these things remembering this wonderful postscript to the story.  This grace-filled post-script.  The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them.  People who were once deemed unworthy to be in the temple at all.  People who were excluded are being included, and they’re being healed.  I once was blind, but now I see; now I am being given new eyes to see.  As a follower of Christ, I’m learning how to walk.  When I stumble, Christ is holding me up.  We needed help, and the man who rode into town on a donkey is here to give it.  The children know it because children know their need for help. The little children are crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David.”  Praise to the Son of David.  Save us, please, Son of David – our prophet, our great high priest, our king.   Let us cry out with them this day and every day.  Amen.

This is what Jesus does, after all.  Jesus saves.  We’re looking at what kind of man Jesus is through these weeks.  We’ve seen Jesus as our unfailing one – the one who never wavers from his Father’s purpose and plan.  We’ve seen Jesus teaching and speaking about the importance of us not only hearing but doing.  We’ve seen Jesus making people whole.  We’ve heard Jesus make an invitation and a promise in the middle of a lot of different reactions to him and questions and doubts – “Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”  Here, we see Jesus coming to the disciples in the middle of a windstorm.  At the end of this story, a confession is made – “Truly you are the Son of God.”  They worship him.  There are two foundational truths at play here.  The first concerns who Jesus is (we call this Christology) because this is always where we must start.  The second is what constitutes a good and fitting and proper response on the part of those who follow him (or what we call discipleship).  Matthew is addressing who Jesus is with his right hand, and who we are in him with his left.  Here’s the quote – “Jesus’ lordship is revealed by our discipleship.  The better we see him, the better we understand who we are.”  We want to see him more clearly.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we look at His word.  Let’s pray.   

“Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.” (14:22) Word has come in chapter 14 about the death of John the Baptist.  Upon hearing the news, we read Jesus withdrew to a deserted place by himself.  Crowds followed him.  Jesus had compassion on them and fed them.  “And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray.”

So, Jesus is not with them.  From the earliest days of the church, the image of the church as a group of people in a sailing ship.  If you look at the ceilings of many churches (including this one), you see that the beams look like the hull of a ship that is turned upside down.  Life for the early church was difficult as they sailed along.  The same thing can be said for the life of the church in any era.  There is no golden age of the church for us to look back and or long for or wish for when everything was blue skies and rainbows.  There was never a time for the church where we haven’t faced opposition or division or failure to live as we should.  If you are looking for the “perfect church” where seldom is heard a discouraging word and all is sweetness and light, you’re going to be looking for a long time.  I do pray that we all find ourselves in a community of faith filled with people who know their need for Jesus, though.

He's coming and he’s coming in our story.  More bad news though before we get to the good news (we’ll get there though!).  Look at what the disciples are facing here.  Contrary winds.  Headwinds that are turning what should be a couple of hours of smooth sailing into an all-night event.  Tacking (zigzagging back and forth for us non-sailors) to try and make progress in the face of the wind.  Working as hard as we can and making very little progress.  Can we identify?  Taking down the sail and going to the oars in the face of the waves hitting the bow of the boat.  The ground is inherently unstable because it’s not ground.  Uncertainty is all around us (and do I need to remind us once again how the sea represented chaos to the ancient Israelites?). Living in the in-between time of the already and not yet of the kingdom of God.  Living in the promise as we await the fulfillment of the promise. Feeling like we need clarity. 

Also it’s dark.  The shoreline is not in sight.  Are we even going in the right direction?  We ask questions.  Why the cross?  Why suffering?  We know that sorrow lasts only for the night and joy comes in the morning, but the night can be hard.  The ark can make it difficult to even see Jesus or know him when he appears.  Thanks be to God though, that Jesus’ appearing is not dependent on our ability to recognize him.  Thanks be to God, we are not left alone.  In the middle of this situation in the middle of the Gospel of Matthew, we are reminded of two verses that bookend this Gospel.  An angel appears to Joseph and Matthew notes “All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord, through the prophet, ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us.’” (1:22-23)  We go to the last words of Jesus in Matthew for “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (28:20b)  It’s early in the morning, but there’s enough light to see a figure walking toward them on the sea.

“And early in the morning, he came walking toward them on the sea.  But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’  And they cried out in fear.  But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” (14:25-27)

Let us consider what this scene tells us about who Jesus is and what kind of God we follow.  Jesus came walking toward them on the sea.  He didn’t need to.  He could have calmed the winds from the shore.  Is Jesus simply showing off in a “Look what I can do!” sense, as one commentator put it?  Or is there something else going on here in terms of what God is like and what God does?   We have been talking from the beginning of our journey through Matthew about how the Old Testament resonates and echoes throughout this good news. 

From the time that God delivered the people of Israel from slavery and oppression in Egypt, He has shown that He is the God who delivers, the God who makes a way through the sea.  This is the God who is making whole.  This is the God in whom we find rest.  Again, what welcome words from Jesus, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”  (14:27) 

Listen to the echoes of words like “Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Josh 1:9) This was before the way was made through another kind of water – the River Jordan.  Listen to the echoes of Job as he declares this about God – “who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea.” (Job 9:8) 

Surely, Matthew is making a point about the divinity of Christ.  This man who has power even over the wind and the waves.  The other thing to consider, though, is what does this tell about who Jesus is functionally – what is it that Jesus does?  Look at what God making a way through the sea meant to the people of Israel – it meant deliverance.   It meant deliverance from bondage and slavery and oppression and injustice.  It meant freedom.  It meant life.    Listen to how the Psalmist sings of this – “When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you they were afraid; the very deep trembled…Your way was through the sea, your path through the mighty waters; yet your footsteps were unseen.”

Here we have Jesus making a way through the sea.  This is the thing about the situation that Jesus’ followers were in on this boat.  They were in a situation from which they were unable to extricate themselves.  At the mercy of forces beyond their control.  Battered by the waves, far from land, the wind against them.  The word for battered here is “tormented.”  Tormented by the waves.  They are in a situation in which they are tormented by forces beyond their control.   

He came walking toward them on the sea.  When you are God, you come to the rescue.  What is it that we need to be rescued from?  I like to describe God as a deliverer.  What is it that we need to be delivered from?  What is it that God has delivered you from?  I like to ask this question.  We might answer despair.   Meaninglessness.  Ourselves.  Our own worst impulses in all the many forms our own worst impulses take.  Jesus comes walking towards us and says, “Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.”

Do not be afraid.  The command that’s repeated more often than any other command in the entire Bible.  Don’t we need to hear this message today?  Do not be afraid.  Jesus has delivered us from a situation.  It was a situation from which we were unable to extricate ourselves.  He’s delivered us from sin.  From the barrier that kept us from God.   Jesus comes to our rescue.  We’re looking ahead, of course.  We read this story knowing where it is going.  Knowing that Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem.  Knowing it is there that Jesus will bear the weight of the world’s sin on Calvary to deliver us.  We come back to the cross and we come back to the table time and time again to say thank you and to be formed as his people.  This is what God does, friends.  This is how God loves.

So what do we do with this news?  What is the fitting and proper response?  Faith.  Trust that Jesus is who he says he is and will do what he says he will do.  Trust.  No matter how meagre.  The invitation is to respond with faith. 

Peter literally steps out in faith.  As the sort of number one disciple, Peter very much stands as a representative of every follower of Christ.  The first called.  The first named in any list.  The archetypal disciple, as someone has said.  His experience.  Our experience.  The one who seeks out Jesus’ teaching.  The one who desires to be close to Jesus even while showing weakness in trusting.  The one who affirms Jesus as the Mesiiah, the Son of the Living God, while showing that he doesn’t fully know what Messiahship means.  The one who falls asleep when called upon by Jesus to watch.  Just like us.  Peter knows what to do when doubt and fear threaten to overwhelm.  He calls out in a prayer that is right up there with “Lord help me!”  “Lord, save me!”  Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”  Jesus is not condemning Peter’s lack of faith here.  He’s lamenting it, ok.  Jesus says those words as he is holding onto Peter, and I can’t imagine that Peter wasn’t clinging onto Jesus here with all his strength in this early dawn lake storm scene      

Let us hear these words of Jesus with tenderness.  We just heard that he’s tender and humble of heart.  Here is the great truth that I’d like us all to take away from this scene today.  It’s good news!  Why?  Many of us live with a great deal of pressure.  There’s a whole song about it.  More than one, but you know the one I mean, maybe.  Pressure as husbands, wives, sons, daughters, leaders, managers, supervisors,  employees, teachers, students, children even.  Here is a truth which means no pressure at all on me.  My being saved/delivered/made whole/given life eternal for now and always (ransomed/healed/restored/forgiven, as the old hymn goes) is in no way dependent on the amount of faith I have.  It is entirely dependent on the strength and faithfulness and steadfast love, which is never ending of the one who has reached down and caught hold of me and is holding me in his strong right hand. Jesus, namely. May we rest in this great truth as wind and waves and darkness and doubt and fear assail.  If it’s clear seas right now, rest in it too. 

Tim Keller wrote a great bit on the life of faith.  “Imagine you are on a high cliff and you lose your footing and begin to fall.  Just beside you as you fall is a branch sticking out of the very edge of the cliff.  It is your only hope, and it is more than strong enough to support your weight.  How can it save you?  If your mind is filled with intellectual certainty that the branch can support you, but you don’t actually reach out and grab it, you are lost.  If your mind is instead filled with doubt and uncertainty that the branch can hold you, but you reach out and grab it anyway, you will be saved. Why?  It is not the strength of your faith but the object of your faith that actually saves you.  Strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch.”

Jesus steps into the boat, and the winds are stilled.  The disciples respond in the same way we’re invited to respond right now.  With a confession of faith and with worship.  We’re going to have a chance to confess our faith using the words of the Apostle Thomas.  We’re going to worship together by coming to the table and symbolically catching hold of our righteous branch, the shoot that came from the stump of Jesse.  I invite you to say with me, “My Lord and my God.”

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ – My Lord and my God.

By his great mercy, he has given us a new birth in a living hope through the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead – My Lord and my God!

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift – My Lord and my God! Amen

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

The question for us is, what do we do with that invitation?  It’s perhaps the question of our lives.  It is the question that is before us every day.  Isn’t it a welcome one?  “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

How many are weary?  How many are carrying heavy burdens?  How many are in need of rest?  How many of us are in need of ease and lightness?  I propose it’s the question of our lives because the thing is, we all carry a yoke. 

The question for us is, whose yoke are we going to carry?  Our own?  One imposed by those around us?  One imposed by the larger society?  One offered by Christ?  Let’s ask for God’s help as we continue our journey toward Jerusalem and holy week.  Let’s pray.

We were talking last week about faith as trust – trust that Jesus is who he says he is and will do what he says he will do.  Trust that Jesus keeps his promises.  These final verses with which we began are much cherished on their own.  This is an invitation to rest in Christ.  To rest with Christ.  The good news.  The gospel – literally good news.

Reading over chapters 11 and 12, we find that this good news comes in the middle of a lot of questions and doubts.  I hope it is not shocking to us to hear that a life of faith may, at times feature doubts and questions.  Someone has said that the life of faith is more of a leap than a confident stroll.  It was like that for the earliest followers of Jesus, and it is like that for us now.  A few years ago, the personal writings of Mother Theresa were made public.  Many were shocked to find out that Mother Theresa (of all people) harboured doubts about her faith, and they said, “How could such a thing be?”  She wrote to a member of the clergy once, “Jesus has a very special love for you.  As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen, and do not hear.”  In another letter, she wrote, “Please pray specifically for me that I may not spoil His work and that Our Lord may show himself – for there is such a terrible darkness within me as if everything was dead.”  “Pray that I keep smiling at God,” she wrote in another letter.  Pray that I keep my face turned toward God in spite of what I doubt, in spite of the questions I may ask.  Note that these doubts and questions were all expressed from a posture of faith.  Jesus has a very special love for you.  Talk of “His work” and “Our Lord.”  The enemy of faith is not doubt but fear.  Mother Theresa, in her questions and doubts, was in good company.  Look at the doubts those closest to Jesus had.  Thomas, most famously (and always to my chagrin). 

It was true in the first century, and it is no less true today.  Human response to Jesus varies wildly, sometimes even within us.  Chapters 11 and 12 of the Gospel of Matthew are full of questions about and opposition to Jesus. This is the context in which we read these beautiful words of invitation.  It features many being indifferent to Jesus despite the miracles he’s working.  It features a group of people speaking out against Jesus’ ways and going from that to figuring out how to kill him.  It features people demanding evidence, a sign.  It features those who are following him. It features this question from John the Baptist himself.  “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  John is in prison.  The kingdom of God was supposed to be about setting prisoners free, no?  Release to the captives.  This message doesn’t seem to be taking off.    John might well be thinking, “Where is that winnowing fork and the fire, and why hasn’t he yet marched on Jerusalem to overthrow the Romans and their client kings and set me free?”

Apart from those who follow him, Jesus is being met with hostility at worst and a lot of indifference at best.   Or maybe indifference is worse.  What do you think?  Do we ever wonder why this message of Jesus doesn’t seem to be taking off the way it should?  Might we almost welcome hostility to Jesus or ridicule of Jesus instead of the fact that Jesus seems in many ways to be largely ignored and seen as irrelevant in so many lives?  (Including people very close to us/people who once followed and now seem largely indifferent)

Why should this be?  Is it attention spans/technology/society/fill in the blank? Is it the church?  Is it us?  Is it me?

Is he really the one who was to come or are we waiting for another?

I ask questions, too.  At the same time, I have no intention of turning away from Jesus.  I love very many things about Jesus.  One of the things I love the most is how he answers questions.  A lot of the time, he answers a question with another question.  Here, he gives this seemingly oblique answer that completely changes what we’re being invited to look at.  Jesus doesn’t even make any claim about himself here.  He doesn’t answer defensively (“How dare you question me?”) or by attacking the questioner (so common these days), saying, “Well, what does Cousin John know?”

Instead, Jesus points to what is being revealed in him.  “Go and tell John what you hear and see.  The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  In other words, people are being made whole.   To you followers of Christ out there, do we ever wonder how to share our faith?  Here we have from Jesus a really good example of how to share our faith. To those of you out there who aren’t following Christ but wonder what it means or what it might be like to, listen to this. 

I am being made whole.  I am being given eyes to see everything in a new light.  I am learning how to walk.  I am learning how to hear.  The poor are having good news brought to them.  These things are happening spiritually and they’re happening literally.  And it’s not just me, it’s happening to a bunch of us.

Because a new era has come about in the person of Christ Jesus.  John was the forerunner, the one who went ahead and pointed toward the one who was coming and pointed toward the kind of kingdom it would be.  It would not be the type of kingdom whose messengers and whose king would tell the people what they wanted to hear, as if we knew best what we needed to hear.  They would not be people and leaders who would do or say anything to hang onto power.  “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?  Someone dressed in soft robes?  Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces.”  A reference, no doubt, to Herod Antipas, the man who had imprisoned John for speaking out about him marrying his half-brother’s wife (but that’s a whole other story).   A man who was symbolized on coins by a reed and Jesus reminds everyone that reeds just get shaken by any little wind.  Is that who you went out into the wilderness to see?  No!  You went to see a prophet, and not just any prophet but the last one. Because a new age has dawned.  If you’re willing to step into it.  Let anyone with ears listen!

It’s a tough message, though.  Prevailing wisdom is popular – that’s why it prevails. Prevailing wisdom might have said Jesus should target political and religious leaders of his day, really get this kingdom thing going.  Prevailing wisdom might say that a proper response to the violence that has been inflicted on this kingdom and that will be inflicted on this kingdom should be violence – a proportional response is reasonable and just, after all, right? – rather than self-sacrificing, forgiving love.

So the positive reaction’s not, shall we say, widespread.   Jesus tells a story.  This generation is like children sitting in a marketplace, and they’re saying to one another, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.” What’s going on here?  This is a mini parable.  The marketplace was where everyone gathered.  The place where things happened.  Apparently, children of the day would play weddings and funerals the same way kids play house or other games which mimic what they see adults do. Flutes were what you played at weddings to celebrate and facilitate the dancing.  Wailing was part of mourning at a funeral. John the Baptist came mourning with his camel hair clothes and fasting and people said, “Oh he has a demon – crazy guy – no thanks.”  Jesus came celebrating and eating and drinking, and they said, “Oh look, a glutton and a drunkard and he’s friends with tax collectors and sinners – no thanks!”  You could almost see Jesus shaking his head here because, apparently there is just no pleasing some people.

And is it any wonder, really?  If you’re doing well in the marketplace, why would you listen to a bunch of children?  If you’re doing fine, why would you listen to a bunch of kids?

Are we really doing fine, though?

The children in the parable get it. Little wonder that a little later, Jesus will call a child and place the child among his followers and say, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven…” (18:2-3)

Which brings us back to our ending/beginning.  This wonderful picture of grace as Jesus praises his Father in Heaven.  Jesus doesn’t say, “To heck with you all, I’m going to hit the road and find a crowd that will appreciate what I’m doing here!”  This wonderful glimpse into the relationship between Jesus and his Father as Jesus prays.  “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; ye,s Father, for such was your gracious will.”  This is not an indictment of intelligence or our intellects.  It’s gracious because in Christ, God has shown that we don’t need to need to search for the answer to our weariness, to the things that burden us.  We don’t need to search for wisdom and the meaning of life at the top of a mountain because wisdom has come down to us, and wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.

Which again are, “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.  And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

We can get offended at offers of help, can’t we?  “You think I can’t do it on my own?” we say. It can be an affront to our sense of independence, our self-sufficiency.  “No, I’m good, thanks. I have my own thing going on,” we say.  “Give your help to those who truly need it,” we say, “I don’t need a crutch.”  To which I say again, “Are we really doing ok?”  Everyone wears a yoke, after all.

You know who doesn’t take offense at offers of help?  Children.  Children know they need help.  Nicole and I don’t have children of our own and I’m thankful for the children who have been around us.  I remember looking after a niece and nephew when they were quite small and being out on the street around Yonge and Eglinton.  When it came time to cross the street, our niece slipped her hand into mine like it was automatic.  Little children know their need for help.  Our wisdom and intelligence can get in the way, can’t it?  God has hidden these things from the wise and intelligent.  It doesn’t mean that we don’t value intellect or education – it means we don’t look at them pridefully or as the thing that will save us.  The one who will save us is the one to whom all things have been handed over by his Father, the one who knows the Father along with anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.  Because God plays a role in our coming to God, in case I thought it was all me and my ability to figure things out.  We play a role, too, in case I thought it was all God.  Always hold those things together lest we fall into error and needless speculation.

The invitation is to take this yoke of Christ. The paradox is that in this submission to Christ’s authority, God’s will and the Holy Spirit’s leading, we find freedom.  What a marvelous mystery, and I can’t explain it, but if you’re living it, you know it.  We may think that freedom means the ability to do whatever we want or whatever we think is right.  I don’t know how well that is working for our world.  Christ’s invitation to freedom in his yoke is to find rest from weariness and heavy burdens.  It is to know peace and even joy in the midst of a lot of uncertainty and questions and even doubts, resting in the hope and love of Christ.  It is to find rest for our souls in the one who is gentle and humble in heart.  Palm Sunday is two weeks away and we’ll more about this then.  May this be an invitation we listen to and respond to this Lenten season and in the days and weeks to come.   

So what are we supposed to do with this?  We seem to be referring to the end of Matthew’s Gospel each week, so here we go again.  “All authority has been given to me,” says Jesus, who’s once again on a mountain in Matthew 28.  Authority is a recurring theme when it comes to Jesus.  He taught as one having authority, we read at the end of the Sermon on the Mount.  Later on, the question will be asked, “By what authority are you doing these things?”  To count yourself among Jesus’ followers is to count yourself as one who has taken up Jesus’ call to follow him.  To follow Jesus is to count yourself as one who has submitted to or lives under the authority of Jesus.  The question I want us to consider today, as we consider Matthew 8, is, “Why do you follow Jesus?”  Or to put it another way – “By what authority does Jesus have any kind of claim on your life?”  If you do not count yourself a follower of Jesus as you watch this, the question might be, “By what authority does Jesus deserve or merit any claim on my life?”

How would we answer such questions?  What might these stories from Matthew 8 have to say to us today as Jesus comes down from the mountain?  Let’s ask God for help as we look at God’s word.

“What Sort of Man Is This?” is the question that we are looking through these weeks of Lent as we travel with Jesus to the cross.  The question is put another way by some people to Jesus in chapter 21:23 – “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”  Hang on to that question and the whole matter of authority as we go here. As Jesus comes down from the mountain, his words are about to become actions.

Matthew describes in 4:23 the miracles that Jesus was doing.  “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing, every disease and sickness among the people.”  Here in chapters 8 and 9, we get into the actual story of some of these miracles.  Ten miracles in all, in groups of 3, 3, and 4.  Nine of them healing or restoring life.  I encourage you to read through both chapters in one go.  We’ve said Matthew likes to put things in groups, and this is what we see here.

Jesus has talked about the importance of hearing his words, and not only hearing his words but doing them.  Jesus is walking his own talk.  Jesus is healing.   Jesus is making whole.  I’m going to put the answer to the question I asked about Jesus’ authority right out here before we get any deeper into this.  Someone has put it like this – “Jesus’ authority is seen in his healing power, his healing power is connected to his serving and suffering.”  So, there’s the beginning of my own answer to the question I posed to us all earlier about what sort of authority Jesus has on my life.  What kind of claim does Jesus have on my life that I want to listen to him and do what he says?  How can the command of a man who lived over 2,000 years ago have such a claim on what I do?

Because Jesus is the one who makes people whole.  Jesus is the one who is making me whole. Jesus is the one who makes people whole in the midst of brokenness.  Jesus is the one who does something for us that we cannot do for ourselves.  Sometimes, our brokenness is quite obvious.  This was very much the case here in the first episode, although all three healings here involve people who are outsiders, religiously or socially marginalized.   The first case is a leper.  Could have been leprosy (Hansen’s disease).  Could have been something like psoriasis.   Someone with a skin condition that meant they had to exist outside of society (literally).  Couldn’t live in a town.  Someone required to go around in ragged clothing.  Someone who was required to go around shouting “Unclean” as they went through the streets lest people got too close.  Someone who was looked on as having contributed in some way to their condition by some wrong they had done. 

This outcast looks to Jesus for wholeness.  “When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him: and there was a leper who came to him and knelt before him…”   This man comes to Jesus boldly.  He didn’t have to make sure he had things in order to approach Jesus.  He knew the place from where his help would come.  We don’t approach Jesus only after we’ve made ourselves right.  I’ve said it before: the only claim we need to make of ourselves to follow Jesus is a recognition of our need for him. 

This man desired mercy and help and he had faith that Jesus was the one to give it.  “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.”  “Lord if you will,” as another translation puts it.  Not “If you can” but “If you choose…”

“He stretched out his hand, and touched him.”  Remember the language of the OT?  When God stretches out a hand, deliverance is at hand.  With a mighty hand and outstretched arm…  There was no worry that what was wrong with this man would somehow contaminate Jesus, conventional wisdom notwithstanding.  When it comes to Jesus, the clean flows our way.  The clean flows this leper’s way.  Jesus stretches out his hand and touches the man, then we hear these wonderful words of Jesus – “I do choose.  Be made clean!” Someone has said this is the entire gospel message in six words!  This is what God does, after all.  God heals.  God makes whole.  Healing is my business, says God, and business is good!

“I am the Lord who heals you.” Jesus comes to Capernaum.  Home base. A centre of commerce on the north side of the lake.  You can visit it today and see a 1st-century synagogue that’s been excavated.  Jesus strolls into Capernau,m and “When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him and saying ‘ Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress…’”

Another outsider.  The enemy.  A member of the occupying forces.  Centurions were the backbone of the Roman army.  Lifers.  Like modern-day sergeant-majors.  Representatives of the power of an empire.  If the leper knew he was beyond his own ability to help himself, it might have been quite different for the centurion.  The power of Rome behind him.  His own competency, ability, strength, authority to rely on.  Oftentimes for us, it’s our tendency to look to our own authority, our tendency to rely on our own competencies, that gets between us and Jesus.

Whatever the case for this centurion, he’s at a point where those things can’t help.  His servant is at home paralyzed.  Maybe he’s had an accident.  Centurions didn’t have families in terms of wives and children.  This servant may have been like family to him.  He doesn’t even ask Jesus to cure her, just tells Jesus what’s happening.  This is a lesson perhaps in how we should pray.  We often want to specify the outcome we want when we pray.  We want to tell God how to handle a situation.  Perhaps it’s best simply to name the situation.  “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon, “ cries a woman in Matthew 15.  “Lord, help me,” she says from her knees.  We get this if you or someone you love has ever been in the grip of something beyond anyone’s control.  “Lord, help me.”  “Lord, help my brother.”  “Lord, help my child.”  “Lord, help my wife/my husband.”

“I will come and cure him,” says Jesus.  It’s likely these words are actually a question.  You’re asking a Jewish rabbi to come and cure your servant?  There are barriers.  Of course, there are barriers.  “I’m not worthy to have you come under my roof,” replies the centurion, because a Jewish rabbi going into the house of a Gentile was not kosher.  “I also am a man under authority,” says the centurion.  He’s recognising the authority that Jesus is under, the authority of his loving Father.  His response is one of faith.  “But only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.”

Jesus is amazed.

I often pray that God would be amazed by our faith.  Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing?  To amaze God?  Jesus is amazed.

What do we mean by faith here?  Someone has described it like this, and I can’t put it in any plainer language – “The faith that Jesus praises, exemplified by the centurion, is that which trusts that Jesus is who he says he is and that he can do what he says he can do.”  This is the response of repentance and faith that Matthew is urging his readers to, and by extension, us and anyone who hears the invitation.

It’s a choice that’s laid before us all.  You’re not born into it.  There’s no inheriting the kingdom.  It’s not based on what group you belong to, what country you’re from, what language you speak, your socio-economic status, you so-called insider or outsider status.  When it comes time for that banquet table toward which the communion table points, when the promise of many coming from east and west and north and south is finally fulfilled, there will be surprises.  Even people who said “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” are going to be surprised, which suggests as we said last week. That there is much at stake in how we respond to Jesus.

“Only speak the word,” says the soldier.  Just say the word.  Certain words have been said.  We’re moving with Jesus all these weeks toward the cross.  Words were said there.  The last ones were, “It is finished.”  Making whole is what God does, and it is what God has done in Chris,t and it is what God is doing in the power of God’s Spirit in lives, including this one.

That’s the authority to which I bow.  I’m a mistrustful Gen X’er too.  I don’t mistrust God’s working to make me whole – to make me new - while we look forward to God making all things new.

Being made whole starts at home.  We’re introduced to Peter’s mother-in-law!  I find this particularly touching, maybe because my mother-in-law lives in my house too.  She was lying in bed with a fever, which in those days could be deadly.  He touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she got up and began to serve him.

She was healed to serve.  We are made whole to serve.  Remember how the angels suddenly came to Jesus after his testing and waited on him? Same word here.  Peter’s mother-in-law is raised up.  She provides something to eat.  Something to drink. This is what the word connotes.    Same as the angels did in the wilderness. Isn’t Matthew wonderful?  She waited on him, she served him.  Being made whole is being made more like Jesus.  Every time we gather at the communion table, we are reminded that Jesus provides us food and drink (Himself!) to heal us.  We go from the table at which we give thanks for this, and we go in order to serve.

We apply our lives to these healing stories from the other side of the cross.  Jesus spoke as one having authority.  Jesus acted as one having authority to make us whole in him; to renew us.  That evening they brought to him many who were possessed with demons, and he cast out spirits with a word and cured all who were sick.  This doesn’t mean that every time we pray to be cured, we are cured.  It doesn’t mean that every time we pray for another to be cured, they are cured.  It doesn’t mean that when a physical cure doesn’t come, we lacked faith.  There is recognition in medicine today of the difference between curing – eradicating a disease or correcting a problem – and healing as a process leading to wholeness.

In Jesus we may be made whole, given life, no matter our physical condition.  Jesus’ healing/wholemaking power is connected to his serving and his suffering even unto death.  Death itself, the one great incurable problem, is given a new outcome in Jesus. In Christ, we look forward to the day when all things are made new, including us, and we will sit around a banquet table.  In Christ, we can say by the same faith of the leper, the centurion, and Peter’s dear mother-in-law and those in Peter’s household – “God has me and nothing can separate me from God’s love.”

May we be able to say the same thing.  May those in our households be able to say the same thing.  May we be bold to accept the invitation to come to Jesus and say “Make me whole, Lord.”  May we make the same invitation to all with ears to hear it.  May these things be true for us all. Amen

The thing about receiving grace and mercy from God is that we’re not meant to keep it to ourselves.  In Christ we are called to be people who live open-handedly.  The same grace and mercy which we receive, we are called to extend.  We said last week that one of the great themes of Matthew’s Gospel is how we live as followers of Jesus; how we not only hear Jesus’ words, but do them.

I came across this story in my notes on this section of Matthew.  It is almost quaint these days to imagine that such a headline would have once caused a stir.  We know headlines are often written as clickbait.  Here it is – “Pope Says it is better to be an ATHIEST than a hypocritical Catholic.”  That’s not actually what he said in a Thursday radio address.  Pope Francis’ message was very much modelled on Matthew’s message – it matters not only what we believe or what we say we believe but it also matters what we do.  Here are the quotes - 'There are those who say 'I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this and that association',' the head of the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church said, according to a Vatican Radio transcript. He said that some of these people should also say ''my life is not Christian, I don't pay my employees proper salaries, I exploit people, I do dirty business, I launder money, (I lead) a double life'.' 'There are many Catholics who are like this and they cause scandal,' he said.'How many times have we all heard people say 'if that person is a Catholic, it is better to be an atheist.’”

We are talking about the foundational importance of what faith looks like.  To put it most simply, It matters what we do.  We all know stories like one of a good friend of mine who went to Sunday School and church as a child.  He heard a lot about God’s love there and how we’re called to love one another.  This lasted until he heard some kids from youth group making fun of his sister behind her back.  We all know stories like this.  The pregnant teen who is shunned by her church family.  The person suffering through a divorce who is shunned by his or her church family at the moment they need their church family the most.

Matthew is keen to emphasize that following Jesus involves faith and ethics.  This idea goes right to the end of the Gospel when Jesus gives his followers The Great Commission, telling them to “go and make disciples (students/learners) of all nations, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.”  Teaching them to listen and to do.  It’s important what we do.

Now if you’ve been around church things a lot you may be saying “Are you talking about works righteousness?”  I’m not.  Does anyone really believe that humanity could be delivered/made whole/live in a right relationship with God and one another and all of creation based on our own efforts?  Faith and work, or what we believe and the grace and mercy we are called to extend were never to be set up in opposition to one another.  They go together, two sides of a coin.  As we are travelling with Jesus in the wilderness (and through these weeks in the Gospel of Matthew), we must always keep in mind who it is that’s doing the teaching.  Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.  The beloved son of God, the chosen One, listen to him.  The one whose coming on the scene announced the coming of the Kingdom of God.  The one who was bringing deliverance.  The one who is one his way to the cross.

When we consider what it looks like to follow Christ, we must remember that all our talk of doing is predicated on who Christ is and what Christ does.  This story is heading toward the cross.  On his way Jesus is bringing deliverance, bringing wholeness, bringing peace.  Bringing us back to God.  He’s teaching too. The Sermon on the Mount starts in ch 5.  Jesus went up the mountain.  Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying…

I’m going to try something a little ambitious here, but stay with me. I’m going to try and go through two chapters of the SOTM in about 10 minutes.  As we go through this we remember that the attitudes and actions of which Jesus speaks are founded on the basis of the one who is speaking them.

Jesus starts with an inner disposition.  The Beatitudes as we call them.  Blessed are… Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are those who know their poverty of spirit – their need for God.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness – that is for the righteousness of God – the justice of God, right relationship with God and with all of God’s creation – for they will be filled.  Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

In Jesus we are coming ever more to bear the family resemblance; to walk as children of light.  To follow Jesus and thus participate in God’s Kingdom, is to be salt and light.  It matters what we do.  One writer talks of how salt of the earth has become such a commonplace saying (We often say so and so is the salt of the earth) that it’s hard to know how strange this phrase must have sounded to Jesus’ listeners.  This writer goes on to say “It’s like saying you are the red hot chili sauce of the earth.”  You are the hot sauce of the earth.  A little can go a long way.  Spice up the whole soup.  I put that stuff on everything.   Go put that stuff on everything.

This will result in a new ethic.  Look at the headings from 5:21 on down – concerning anger, concerning adultery, concerning divorce, concerning oaths, concerning retaliation.  “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient time, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement.”   Anger is not something to be held onto.  Insults are not something to be given and answered.  This will never lead to a good place.  Jesus is not equating anger with murder.  Anger for anger and insult for insult can easily lead to punch/counterpunch and anyone who pays attention to the news of any one of the many videos of road rage available and so popular online knows where this can lead. You have heard that it was said ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer.  But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also…”  This is hard!  I know each of these need a sermon in themselves but stay with me.  Hear Jesus saying “Are you still with me,” because it’s about to get even harder.  “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”  It’s not just about loving those and doing good to those that love us.  That’s the easy way.  Even the tax collectors do that, Jesus says.  To be children of God is to come ever more to bear a family resemblance to our Father.  Our God who is moving toward the cross where he will pay the price for our sins, our failures, and pray even in those moments for the people who are killing him.

Are you still with me?  We need to be turning to our Father all the time.  Practicing acts of piety.  Almsgiving.  Giving things away.  Not to be seen by people but to be rewarded by your Father who sees in secret.  Pray.  Fast.  It’s a bit of a shame we’ve let this one go so much in our tradition.  It can be meaningful.  Do these things to stay connected to our Father in heaven.  Make the Kingdom of God the foundation of your life.  Do not be consumed with storing up treasures on earth, but treasures in heaven.  Are we giving the Kingdom of God thing our attention?  Are we taking it seriously?  Is it foundational for us?  I am asking these questions of myself as I listen to Jesus’ words.  Jesus tells us to look at the birds of the air and the lilies of the field and remember that they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, neither do they toil or spin, but see how they grow.  See how your heavenly Father feeds them.  What a beautifully poetic passage.  One that’s given such comfort to followers of Christ through the centuries.  We’re not trying to say don’t plan.  We’re not trying to say don’t work.  We’re talking about God’s care for all of creation.  Do we take it seriously?  Ask for these things to be true in our lives.  Ask for the character of God to be made known through us, in our actions, in our words, in our attitudes.  In how we see the world.  In how we see everyone and everything.   Ask and it will be given you; search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you.

And Jesus says “Are you still with me?”  These things are hard.  You might say they go against our nature.  The gate is narrow and the road is hard, Jesus says.  But the thing about this road is, it leads to life.  These are matters of life and death that we’re talking about friends.  We need to stay vigilant on this thing.  We need to beware of things.  We need to beware of false prophets – false teachers, false preachers who would tell us to go the easy way.  They are destructive.  You’ll know them by their fruits, Jesus says.  Hold your teachers up to this standard.  Hold me up to this standard please.  Are we practicing what we preach?  Hold our faith community up to this standard.  Are we part of a community in which acts of love are borne out?  William Barclay in his commentary on Matthew writes of some of the ways love is not borne out.  In a faith that solely or mainly concerns itself with the externals –with its rites and rituals.  Solely or mainly, note.  In a faith that concerns itself mainly with prohibitions.  Those who present or view Christianity as a set of things we don’t do.  It’s like when we as Canadians define ourselves by not being American.  Teaching that presents the faith as arrogant or specialist.  Teaching that divorces religion from life.  Teaching that says only we have the true doctrine.  A church leader whose way is the only way.  We must be careful and hold one another to account.  It’s not about being judgmental, it’s about being discerning, about looking for the fruit.  About asking the question in any circumstance we face as followers of Christ – “What does love call for here?”

What does love call for here?  We are constantly faced with situations in which we ask that question.  Some years ago during one of our OOTC Saturday nights, a guest who had become a friend was asking for “The Reverend” at the door.  Dixon Hall wouldn’t let him in.  He was too drunk.  He was a danger to himself, to the people around him, it was deemed.  They told me not to let him see me, as it would just cause problems.  I wasn’t sure what to do.  Should I make myself scarce?  Would it exacerbate the situation to talk with him?  Should I try and overturn the decision, plead his case with Dixon Hall?  I came upstairs and said let’s talk.  We sat in one of the back pews.  I felt awful.  He was soaking wet.  I didn’t want to go against the decision that had been made.  He would come to our Saturday night services regularly.  He tried to guilt me and it was working “So all that talk about love, and you serving the bread and the cup to me, that’s all meaningless?”  I looked at him.  I said “You know that’s not true.”  He did know.  He knew I cared about him.  I put my arm around him and helped him back to the narthex.  Dixon Hall allowed him to wait there.  I found out later that after a couple of hours he had sobered up enough to be let in, to be given a mat.  Things worked out but not without a lot of internal questioning around what should I do and how much am I being manipulated and what should I say and what does love call for here.

What does love call for here?  This question should always be on our minds.  There’s a slightly terrifying thought here.  It appears in the Gospel of Matthew that what we do is of eternal consequence.  “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.  On that day many will say to me ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’  Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’”  Yikes.  Where is the love?  This is the question.  Paul said “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”  What we do matters.  Jesus ends the Sermon on the Mount with the first parable in Matthew’s Gospel.  “Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.” (7:24-25)  We know this about life.  The rain will fall.  The floods will come.  The wind will blow.  Hearing and doing Jesus’ words is a firm foundation that will not be moved.

We don’t call up acts of mercy and grace and love on our own.  We keep our eyes on the one whom we follow.  These words of Jesus aren’t to frighten us.   As another section in Hebrews says, “For God is not unjust; he will not overlook your work and the love that you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do.  And we want each of you to show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope to the very end, so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promise.” (Hebrews 6:10-12)   I know you.  I know your acts.  I know your deeds.  I’m not thinking we should all be going around worried about this, or we should performing acts of kindness out of fear of God’s judgement.  Perfect love casts our fear.  As we’re on this hard road together and going through this narrow gate together, God will write his love on our hearts when we ask him.  Teach me to love as thou dost love, and do as thou wouldst do.  Faith and ethics are two sides of the coin.  Faith matters.  What we do matters.  This is the narrow gate, the hard path, to life.

“What sort of man is this Jesus?”  The one who opened his mouth and taught, then went down from the mountain to and showed what Kingdom living means.  To hear his words and do them is like building your house on rock – a foundation strong enough to withstand anything.  This is the one who is leading us to the cross throughout these weeks friends. God grant that we might ever increasingly know him as our rock, the one for whom we listen and the one whose words are borne out in our actions.

You might think one would get to the point where such testing was no longer required, and this would be wrong.  Things go wrong, you see.  Settings may be changed.  Cords may have been unplugged.  The process of testing never ends.  We’re following Jesus into the wilderness today.  The wilderness is a place of testing, and we follow Jesus there.  One of my favourite images for the church is that of a pilgrim people, making our way through the wilderness together.  The wilderness is harsh.  It can be a place of privation (lack).  We remember the people of God in the wilderness and if we count ourselves among the people of God, we know that the wilderness can be a place of complaint, of us wanting to test God, of questions being asked like “Is God with us or not?”, of failure to put God above everything and anything.  The wilderness is also the place where God’s guidance is made known, where God’s promises are made known, where the nature of God and the word of God is revealed to us.  The wilderness is a place where slaves are turned into children of God through the one who we are invited to follow.  I’m talking about Jesus. The unfailing one. I’m talking about our lives.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we begin our journey through Lent with Jesus today in Matthew 4. 

We’re going to be going through the Gospel of Matthew throughout Lent and for some weeks beyond.  I think it’s a good thing to journey with Jesus through a Gospel through the weeks of Lent, but it’s hardly enough time to do justice to the Gospel, so we’ll keep it going through the season known as Eastertide, which lasts 50 days after Easter.  Matthew is a much-beloved Gospel and was given pride of place among the four.  It contains five blocks of Jesus’ teaching, which we’ll look at through these weeks.  The Sermon on the Mount is probably the most famous.

More so, perhaps, than any other Gospel writer, Matthew is explicit in emphasizing the ethical nature of what it means to be a follower of Christ.  I’m talking about what being in Christ means in terms of the choices we make, what we say, what we do.  The connection between faith and morality.   What we believe and what we do.   It is significant that Jesus ends the story of the wise man who built his house upon the rock like this: “So is anyone who hears my words and does them.”  It is significant among Jesus’ last words to his followers is a command to go and make disciples of all nations, “Teaching them to obey everything I commanded you.”  The only Gospel writer to use the word “church.”  A Gospel writer who was concerned that the church is living out its calling as the body of Christ in the world.

So unless you think we’ve got that down no problem, it’s a Gospel for our age.  A Gospel for followers of Christ and a Gospel that serves as an invitation for those who aren’t following Christ.

The heading in my Bible at Matthew 4 is entitled “The Temptation of Jesus.”  It might equally be called “The Testing of Jesus” because that is also what is going on here.  Matthew has told of the story of the birth of Emmanuel (God-with-us), son of Abraham, son of David.  The King.  Magi from the east have come to bow down before this King.  Christ’s identity has been affirmed at his baptism when a voice from heaven is heard saying, “This is my beloved Son.”  The Holy Spirit rests on him and leads him.  “What sort of man is this?” is the overarching question we’re looking at through these weeks.  What does it mean in terms of those who follow Jesus? 

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (the accuser, the deceiver, the one who speaks against).  He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.”  He was hungry.  The Judean wilderness is a harsh place.  It’s barren.  Rocks and desert.  It’s not like what we might consider wilderness here in Canada with all our woods and rivers and lakes.  The wilderness is a harsh place, but it’s also a place of the Spirit’s leading.  It’s a place of God’s provision and protection.  When we think of this story, we can’t hear “wilderness” and the number 40 without thinking of the people of Israel.  Israel not being ready to take on the call that God had for them to be God’s people.  The people of Israel being in the wilderness for 40 years.  Being tested.

Which is what God does.  God tests to make us fit for service in the same way that we test equipment or metal that’s going to make up an airplane or mics or amps or all the things we test. The word for test and temptation is the same word, which is interesting.  It has two meanings, which are really representative of the two opposing forces that are at work here.  God who tests and the accuser, the liar, the deceiver, the one who speaks against, who tempts.  Note that this story is happening under the Spirit’s leading.  The devil has a useful role to play here, just as he did when he asked the heavenly council in the book of Job, “Is God worthy of our worship/adoration/devotion no matter our circumstances?”  The question for us I,s “How will we respond?”

The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”  The “if….then” proposition being made here is not so much about whether or not Jesus truly is the Son of God.  The question might be better phrased, “Since you are the Son of God…”  Since you are the Son of God, what are you going to do?  What is this sonship going to mean?

To whom or to what are you going to pledge allegiance?  Is Jesus going to be, as someone has said, “a self-serving wonder-worker flexing power for his own ends?”  We may be very familiar with this story and how it turns out (and, of course, I just read it and told you how it turns out if you’re familiar).  Let us not presume that this outcome was inevitable or say, “Well, it was Jesus, what choice did he really have in the matter?”  Jesus in his humanity had a choice, the same way he’ll have a choice a little later in the story where he’s tested again and he’ll tell his followers “Do you not know that I could ask my Father for thousands of angels to protect us and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?”  He had a choice the same way he had a choice when he was mocked on the cross.  “He saved others; he cannot save himself!  He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to for he said, ‘I am God’s Son!”  This story looks back, and it looks forward.  Jesus will show that salvation/deliverance can be experienced not only from death but even through death.   

Trust can fail.  We know what this is like.  Our trust can fail.  Jesus’ trust never does, and he names a promise of God here.  But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”  This is not simply a moral tale which we read and say, “And so the lesson is that with the Holy Spirit and the Bible we can overcome temptation.”  Jesus is the one who remained faithful to his Father – the one in whom and by whose faithfulness we are enabled to do the same.  We cannot hear about 40 days in the wilderness without thinking of the people of Israel, and we can’t hear of being hungry in the wilderness without thinking of the people of Israel who after being delivered from slavery complained to Moses and Aaron and said they might as well have died in Egypt than to be killed out in this wilderness by hunger.

They failed.  We failed.  The question that hangs over this entire is one of allegiance.  Here, the specific question is one of trust.  Who are you going to trust?  God?  “Trust yourself,” says the deceiver. Help yourself.  Then we hear this wonderful answer from Jesus: “One lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  Our entire existence is dependent on God.  In whom Jesus trusts.  In whom we are invited to put our trust.  God who has us, who holds us in His strong right hand.

The second temptation is to put these promises of God to the test.  If Jesus is held in God’s strong right hand, why not test the theory out?  The accuser can use scripture too, and we are reminded here that Holy Scripture can be twisted and used to justify horrific things.  “Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands, they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”  Do something spectacular. It will cause a sensation, and hasn’t God promised protection after all?  Jesus replies, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”  Again this goes back to the people of Israel in the wilderness Exodus (17 this time) when they had no water and they quarrelled with Moses and put God to the test and said “Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” and they said, “Is the Lord among us or not?”  Is God’s hand really with us or not?  Jesus doesn’t need to test anything when it comes to his Father.  I may need to test out the mics and the amps, but I have no need to test that God cares for me.  “Again it is written,” says Jesus, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Finally, the big one.  The devil isn’t even bothering with the “Since you are the Son of God” stuff now.  Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour, and he said to him, “All these I will give you (not even bothering now with the “If or since you are the Son of God”), if you will fall down and worship me.”

At heart, this episode is about allegiance. Here, the choice is laid bare.  Who are you going to serve?  Again, we look back in this story and remember the failure of the people of Israel.  The golden calf episode.  We look at our own failures, and if it’s not so much about golden calves now, we can perhaps say it’s gold or cash or ourselves or whatever our world turns into gods and whatever we turn into gods.  “Worship me, and I will do something for you,” says the devil.  Quid pro quo, this is the way of the world.  Everything is transactional, right?” 

Jesus, the unfailing one, reflecting the words of the Shema, that daily Jewish prayer, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”  Jesus says, “Away with you Satan, for it is written,  ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

This is what sonship means for Jesus.  It’s quite the thing to be at the top, looking down on everyone.  This is where we should aim to be, no?  Personal power, popularity, political power, social power, economic power.  This is what we’re told to crave no?  It’s quite the thing to be on top, looking down.  Raised up.

Of course, the only place Jesus will be looking down from is a cross.  The power of self-sacrificing, other-serving love is what sonship means for Jesus.  God doesn’t demand our worship in exchange for God’s services.  God commands our worship and is worthy of our worship because Jesus loved us even unto death.

Immediately afterward, as we have this great line - suddenly, angels came and waited on him.  They cared for him, served him, it’s a word that suggests offering food and drink.  Our unfailing one will journey on.  We will journey on with him.

Now, we may be saying, “What does this have to do with us?”  We’re not divine.  We’re not being whisked from place to place by the devil.  We’re not the Son of God.

The thing is, to follow Christ is to be an adopted daughter of God, an adopted son of God.  What does sonship mean for us?  What does daughtership mean?  It means we have a brother who identifies with us.  Someone has said, “Jesus came to us to become as we are.” Here in chapter 4, we see Jesus passing the test, fitted perfectly for service to his Father and worthy of our allegiance and love.

This testing/tempting doesn’t stop for Jesus, and it doesn’t stop for us.  The accuser still goes about like a roaring lion.  The accuser doesn’t have any power over us except for the power to deceive, to make us believe his lies.  Lies like “We should really be looking at for ourselves first.”  To cause us to wonder, “Is God really worthy of our trust or do we really depend on ourselves?” 

We fail, and I’m glad for seasons like Lent, which call us to intentionally turn to our forgiving God.  Our tests, trials or temptations take many forms.  We may fall into the temptation to rely on our own usefulness, our own ability to do things/show things/prove things that make a difference in people’s lives.  The temptation to be spectacular, to do something to win applause and popularity.  The temptation to be powerful. 

We’re a pilgrim people journeying with Jesus, looking to his prayer as a way of life, vulnerability to others in shared ministry, and fully committed trust in God’s love and care.

Jesus is not only our example in passing the test; he’s our enabler through his Spirit.  He has blazed the trail for us.  The trail has been blazed, and it’s been walked by faithful followers of Christ for over 2,000 years now.  Thank God Jesus passed the test.  Hear these words from Hebrews 4: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested, as we are, yet without sin.  Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (4:15-16)

What sort of man is this?  This is the Son of God.  This is the one through whom and in whom we claim sonship and daughtership.  May all of us approach the throne of grace confidently and boldly in him.  Amen.

So, let us listen to him.  Let us listen to these words of Moses: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.” (Deut 18:15). You shall listen to such a prophet.  We are talking about Jesus!  Oh, for a voice like that of James Earl Jones with which I could read the words that came from the cloud, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!” (Luke 9:36)

We’re on the doorstep of Lent, the season in the church year in which we walk together through the life and death and life of Jesus, in which we walk together through life and death and life in Christ.  We are on holy ground here.  Let us ask for God’s help as we hear God’s word to us this day.

We are on holy ground here.  The Transfiguration.  It’s a big deal event in the life of Jesus.  One of only two times the voice of God is heard.  “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  These were God’s words for Jesus at his baptism.  God’s words in Luke 9 are for Christ’s followers: “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!”

Now, you have no doubt heard me say that the purpose of our listening to God in his word is not simply that we take what we hear and apply it to our lives.  This is not to say that the story of Good has no meaning in our day-to-day life.  The question that is always before us as followers of Jesus is, “What does it mean to apply my life to this story?”  It’s a subtle distinction, perhaps, but one that is evident in a story such as this. The story of Jesus’ transfiguration is not one from which we simply draw a moral lesson.  We might consider this story and say something about times in our lives when we have mountaintop experiences of God.  Experiences where we feel the presence of God in a special way.  We go from those experiences to acts of service, just as Jesus does later in chapter 9, healing a young boy.  The Christian life includes both special experiences of the presence of God and getting into the trenches, rolling up our sleeves, or putting our boots on and serving.  We are not going to stop there, though.

We are on holy ground here, along with Moses and Elijah and Jesus’ inner circle, Peter, James and John. The story which Luke tells here is a revelation of who Jesus is.  As Jesus’ followers, may it be the deep desire of all our hearts that we are ever more coming to know him.  How does this happen, you ask?  Stop, look, listen.  Be silent even, just as Peter, James and John were when all was said and done.

There are stories of Jesus to which we are called to respond with awe, wonder, and worship.  This is one such story, filled as it is with picture which invoke memories of going up mountains to hear from God; God’s presence known in a fiery pillar of cloud; chariots of fire; a cloud that descended on the tent of meeting in such a way that no one could go into the tent.  Pictures of the glory of God.  Peter doesn’t do so great here, and we often don’t do so great, but he didn’t know.  Later on Peter will write of this day and he’ll say this, “For he received honour and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory; saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven while we were with him on the holy mountain.” (1 Peter 1:17-18)

The question for us may not be “Is Jesus simply one in a line of prophets/teachers/wise people?”  If that is the question, no, he’s not simply one in a line.  The more relevant question for us may be the one that Jesus himself posed to his followers.  “Once when Jesus was praying alone, with only the disciples near him, he asked them, 'Who do the crowds say that I am?” The answered, “John the Baptist; but others Elijah; and still others one of the ancient prophets has arisen.”  He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”  (Luke 9:18- 20a)

Surely the question of our lives!  Peter answers, “The Messiah of God.”

Do you want to know him more?  What kind of Lord is it that we follow?  Listen to him.  Jesus goes on, “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” (9:22)  Then this, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” (9:23-24)

Is it any wonder we talk about awe, wonder, and worship in the face of such words?

Eight days after this Jesus takes Peter and John and James up on the mountain.  What do they go there to do?  To pray.  It’s a pattern we see throughout Jesus’ life.  Before his baptism, he is praying.  Before choosing the 12, he is praying.  We want to know more of what God is like.  We want to know more of who Jesus is and who Jesus calls his followers to be.  We want God to be revealed to u,s yes? 

1. Pray and listen for God’s voice in his Word.  “And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.  Suddenly they say two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him.” (9:29-30)  Let us be people who pray and people who look to the scriptures. I’m glad we’ve been talking so much about Moses lately! Let us be a people who are in conversation with the scriptures.  Jesus is in conversation with two men who represent the Hebrew Scriptures – the law and the prophets.  Moses and Elijah.  Of course, Moses was a prophet too.  He brought the word of the Lord.  He brought the word of the Lord to Pharoah, and the word was “Let my people go.”  Freedom.  Deliverance.  Elijah spoke about expectation that what was promised by God would come to pass.  In the middle of drought and famine, the word of the Lord was, “I will send rain on the earth” (1 Kings 18:1)

While Jesus was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men.  The glory of God breaks through.  The heavens and the earth embrace.  They’re talking.  Moses and Elijah.  The Messiah.  The one who is the fulfillment of the words spoken by Moses about God raising up a great prophet.  I wonder if Moses was saying something like, “I couldn’t have imagined!”  The Word made flesh and setting up his tent among us.  I wonder if Elijah said something like, “I spoke about life-bringing rain, and you’re bringing life in a whole new way!” 

They are talking.  This story is told in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  Luke is the only Gospel writer who tells us what they were discussing.  “They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.”  Jerusalem is where this whole story is going.  That is where we will be headed together as we follow Jesus together on his journey to Jerusalem.  Shortly after our passage, we read, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51). May God grant us the same resolve to go with him. They’re talking about his departure.

His Exodus.

This is the Greek word that’s used here.  When you go to Greece today and you look at Exit sign,s they say “Exodus”.  I was speaking earlier about why we look at things like the book of Exodus and why we spend so much time with them.  Jesus is in conversation with the one who led the first Exodus.  That prototypical saving event which meant deliverance for the people of Israel.  Deliverance from oppression.  Rescue from a situation from which they were unable to extricate themselves.

They’re talking about his Exodus.  The appearance of Jesus’ face has changed, and his clothes are dazzlingly white.  The great prophet Moses and the great prophet Elijah, who have appeared in glory because they’re part of the heavenly realm, are speaking to Jesus about what he is about to accomplish in Jerusalem.  A new exodus.  A new deliverance.  A new passing through the waters for a people – humanity -  who are oppressed by sin (our missing the mark, our messing up) and unable to help themselves, and he’s going to be leading us to freedom.

What we must remember as we’re looking at this scene is that they’re not just speaking of glory and triumph.  Look at how this exodus is going to be accomplished.  Look at this with awe and wonder and worship.    I know I say this every year, but surely it bears repeating -don’t go from the triumph of Palm Sunday to the triumph of Easter and miss something about which these three figures in our story are talking.  Don’t miss Good Friday (seriously, why come to church on Good Friday because it’s important).  How is this exodus going to be accomplished? Suffering and rejection and death and new life.  The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

The way of the cross.  Let us not go straight to new life without taking into account suffering and rejection and death because these things do not simply lie across the path to the exodus that Jesus is going to accomplish.  They’re part of the path.  Why do we keep a cross at the front of our sanctuary?   Why does Jesus bears the wounds in his hands and in his side?  Why do we continue to come to this table and proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes?

1. continued desire to know what it means to take up our crosses daily, to lose our lives for his sake so that our lives may be saved.  To say along with Jesus, “Not my will but yours be done, Lord.”  Perhaps it’s best if we sit silent before all this. 

Peter is not silent. Impulsive is Peter.  Man of action.  Act first, think later.  Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” – not knowing what he said.  Not knowing.  Wanting to prolong the occasion, maybe.  Wanting to mark the occasion, maybe.  Wanting to link the event they have just witnessed with a time and place.  That day on the mountain.

This exodus that Jesus will accomplish is for all of life.  This call to take up our cross is a call to take it up daily.  There is always an immediacy in Luke.  To you is born this day in the city of David.  Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.  I must stay at your house today.  It’s not something we’re supposed to contain.  We’re not supposed to contain it to Sunday morning in the church.  Or Saturday afternoon at Trinity Square. Or Wednesday morning in church or in someone’s home during the week when we get together.  This is not something we are to contain and compartmentalize and put in tents on the mountain where we can come back to it and remember it from time to time.    

This is for our whole lives.  So let us approach this story with awe and worship and praise.  Let us stand with Peter and James and John and listen as we are overshadowed by the presence of our Almighty God and listen to God’s voice.

“This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!”

Listen to him.  Listen as he says, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be filled.  Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”  Who says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”  Who says, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I tell you?”  Who says, “Your sins are forgiven.”  Who says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

They don’t fully get it, these followers. We don’t fully get it.  They’re unable to heal in the next story.  Soon after, they’ll start arguing about who’s the greatest.  Even after Easter, Peter will not fully get it.  He’ll need to learn about things like who he’s able to sit down and share a meal with – even Gentiles.  They kept silent because it was only after Jesus’ death and resurrection that all this made any sort of sense.  It’s only when you’re following the risen Jesus that something like losing our lives to have them saved makes any kind of sense. 

None of us fully get it, but my prayer is that we are ever more fully coming to get it.  To commit ourselves to this suffering, rejected, dying, living Messiah in such a way that we are coming to know life.  To make this our prayer:

Pray – Lord, I give my life to you.  Do with me as you will.  Make of me what you will. 

To find life in this surrender.

To live each day with thankful hearts, lost in awe, wonder, love and praise.  May this be true for all who hear these words.

Amen

We are in the final two weeks of our six-week journey through these verses.  We have looked at what it means to be rooted and grounded in God’s love.  We have looked at what it means to be transformed by the renewal of our minds – a whole new way of thinking, of perceiving, of seeing.  We have looked at what it means to love God with all our heart and soul, the part of us beyond words; the seat of our wills and intentions and emotions – to respond to God in praise with thanks and joy.  We have looked at what it means to love God with our strength – to demonstrate God’s ways of mercy and grace and justice and compassion and faithfulness with our deeds – our giving and our service – and our words.

Which has brought us to the place where we consider the second part of Jesus’ command.  It’s not a new command but may we hear it newly.  Love your neighbour as yourself.  The two commands aren’t independent of each other.  They’re more like two sides of a coin.  As someone has said, loving our neighbours is loving God and vice versa.  We’re talking about the vertical.  We’re talking about the horizontal.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we consider this week what it means to love one another in the Christ’s church.  Let’s pray.

We said at the start of January that we would spend these weeks of Epiphany figuratively sitting in the grass at Jesus’ feet, listening to his words.  It’s been good has it not?  This morning we’re not sitting in the grass so much as sitting in the house.  Someone told him, “Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”  But to the one who told him of this, Jesus replied “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”  And pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here is my mother and my brothers!  For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matt 12:47-50)

How do you feel about the church and what does this mean in your life?  What are signs of life in the church?  Do you love Jesus?  We are talking about what it means to be a follower of Christ, to be in Christ, for those who are following Christ or those with some level of interest in knowing what it means to follow Christ.  All notions and practices of love in Jesus are founded in God’s love for the world and all that is in it.  Our love for one another in the church is rooted and grounded in the truth that Jesus loves the church.  Listen to these verses from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians in which Paul writes of love between spouses.  Paul takes the opportunity to lay down this truth – “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, in order to make her holy by the cleansing her with the water of washing by the word, so as to present the church to himself in splendour, without a spot of wrinkle or anything of the kind – yes so that she may behold and without blemish… For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, because we are members of his body.” (Eph 5:25-27. 29-31)

I ask once again, how do we feel about the church?  Do we love the church and if so, how do we show that love?  Love that is not borne out in action is not love at all, after all.

None of this is to condemn us, but may it challenge us. Jesus takers the opportunity which the arrival of his mother and brothers affords to speak of who we are in him.  His brother and sister and mother; in other words his family.  I’ve got all my sisters and brothers and me! We are family.  I don’t mean this in a cultish “We’re your new family now” way of course. Despite the lack of attention paid to his family in Matthew 12, we know that Jesus was obedient to his mum and dad. (Luke 2:50)  We know that Jesus showed loving care for his mother even while he was dying. (John 19:26-27)  This is not to say that family members won’t turn us away or hurt us or maybe even mock us for our life in Christ. At such times our church family might take on a whole new importance.  We might be far away geographically from family and our church family takes on a whole new importance.    In Christ, we are sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers (and aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews and cousins and….)

So let’s spend some time together!  Before we get to that though, let’s stay with Jesus in Matthew 12.  I know that some families can be difficult (I mean I’ve heard that).  Our families tend to the people who know us best.  The people who have seen us at our worst and our best.  The people we have hurt.  The people we have delighted and made proud.  Few families are perfect.  When Tolstoy wrote “Each happy family is alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” he surely wasn’t thinking that there was such a thing as a perfectly happy family!  We’re talking about spending time together and it is in spending time together that we find out how imperfect we are; how in need of grace we are; how in need of forgiveness and mercy we are. This is who we are, family of God.  We want to be mature about this.  Clear-eyed.  Sharp.  Grace-filled.  Grace extending.  To say we’re imperfect is not to say we don’t have ethical standards.  Jesus knew we’d cause problems for one another and laid out how to handle such problems in Matt 18.  The church is being prepared for Christ as a bride is prepared for a wedding (to use another metaphor for the church).  Let’s stay together as we move on down the Jesus road together.  Do not become one of those people who say “I want nothing to do with the church because it’s full of hypocrites or fill in the blank”  The church is full of people who know their need for grace and who know their need to be formed in the image of Christ, and God is doing that in His church.

I want us to note one final thing about this story.  “And pointing to his disciples” is how the NRSV translates a Greek word in v 49 which means Jesus stretched out his hand.  When we talk about God stretching out his hand over, we’re talking about protection.  I can’t help but be reminded again of the line from John the Baptist’s birth that went “The hand of the Lord is on him.”  I sometimes wonder that God has entrusted his work to us.  We’ve not been left on our own.  We are united with one another in the common experience of the Holy Spirit.  I read a church’s self-description recently as a community of like-minded people.  We’re much much than that family (and often less than that!).  We share the Holy Spirit of Christ together.  The hand of the Lord is on us, what might we become?  Pair that with Jesus’ promise to his church with which Matthew’s good news ends – “And remember I am with you always even to the end of the age.”

The hand of the Lord is on you.  God is with us always.  We’re considering what the love of God looks like in the community of faith (or the family of faith).  Love that is not expressed in action is no kind of love at all.  We looked at that truth last week.  I’ve called this “Signs of Life.”  We’ll be looking for signs of life outside in the coming weeks (hopefully) if not months.  What are the signs of life (or signs of love) in a community of faith? 

Luke describes such a community in the second chapter of Acts.  The church is starting out.  They’ve waited for the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit has come.  They’ve been baptized.  Then this – “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” (Acts 2:42)

They were (hopefully) devoted.  We’re talking about the practices in which we engage together which show our love for one another.  We don’t want to love only in word and speech, do we?  Our love for one another looks like something, and Luke spells out what it needs to look like.  They were devoted to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers.  The word for “devoted to” also means to continue in, to persevere in, to hold fast to.  These activities were not marginal to but central to the life of the community. 

We take our inspiration where we get it.  Norman Powell was a part of the Raptors 2019 championship team.  He had a personal motto which went “Understand the Grind.”  I’m not saying that life in Christ is a grind – it’s life.  I’m talking about how we in the church persist together in practices that are part of our everyday/everyweek life, no matter what it going on.  Even in the dog days of winter.

We hold fast together to the apostles’ teaching.  The teaching of those who had been with Jesus.  The story of the good news of Jesus.  The good news of God’s grand redemption plan.  Forgiveness.  Reconciliation.  Wholeness.  Restored relationship with God and a new perspective on everything.  Coming back to the cross again and again.  Looking to the whole of scripture as Jesus did with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus and considering how everything from Moses to the prophets speaks of him.  Considering what it means to apply our lives to this story.  This is not simply an ancient collection of stories and poems and history that we have to figure out how to apply to our lives.  The question is how do our lives apply to this story?  Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wrote so well about life together put it like this:

We become a part of what once took place for our salvation. Forgetting and losing ourselves, we, too, pass through the Red Sea, through the desert, across the Jordan into the promised land. . . . We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, and there He still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace. It is not that God is the spectator and sharer of our present life, howsoever important that is; but rather that we are the reverent listeners and participants in God’s action in the sacred story, the history of Christ on earth. . . . [Then] a complete reversal occurs. It is not in our life that God’s help and presence must still be proved… The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than the fact that I shall die, and the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, shall be raised on the Last Day. Our salvation is “external to ourselves.” I find no salvation in my life history, but only in the history of Jesus Christ.

The devoted themselves to fellowship.  Koinonia.  Participation with.  Sharing in as co-sharers in the life of Christ.  That in-real-life sharing of life for which we long.  It is not for nothing that Tolkien called the first book of the Lord of the Rings series “The Fellowship of the Ring.”  A group of disparate (and sometimes desperate) people (actually a couple of people, a couple of hobbits, an elf and a dwarf) joined in a common goal.  The church as a group of people bearing one another’s burdens and in so doing fulfilling the law of Christ. Making sure that anyone in need was taken care of.  Living open-handedly with one another. 

Breaking bread together.  Breaking bread at the Lord’s Table.  Breaking bread in homes (or after church).  Sharing meals.  May we continue this?  I’m thankful for those in my life who have been examples of hospitality for me.  May we continue it.  I was saying recently here in church, isn’t it wonderful to know one another well enough that we know how we take our coffee or tea?  Just like a family. 

Finally never forgetting to pray together.  On our own.  In groups of two or three.  In small groups.  Once a month on Zoom.  In our worship services.  How are we doing with praying together as a family?  It is in prayer together that we are actively seeking and submitting to God’s direction.  It is in prayer together that we actively acknowledge our dependence on God.  Someone has said that it is in prayer that we acknowledge that heaven and earth have been brought together in the person of Christ.  It is in prayer that together we express our praise, our adoration, our trust, our gratitude, our burdens.  In so doing we are transformed by the Holy Spirit of God. 

Jesus said, “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”  This is who we are family of God.  This is what we do.  This is how we show our love for one another – holding fast to/persevering with/devoting ourselves to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers.  May we continue to seek and to see signs of life/signs of love in this and every family of faith.

Of course, it’s not simply about speaking and hearing.  It’s about responding in trust and with love.  “And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.” (v 23)

In the early centuries of the church (4^th century in fact), a story was told of John the Apostle.  When age laid its hand upon John and he became frail and unable to walk, he would be carried into the gathering of believer’s each Lord’s Day.  They would ask him to bring a message each week.  This was John the Apostle!  Each week John said the same thing to the people who gathered – “Little children, love one another.”   After some weeks, some people approached him.  Same sermon week after week.  They said to him, “Why do you always say this?”  John replied, “Because it is the Lord’s command, and if this only is done, it is enough.”

How much do we need to hear and live this message today?  How much does the world need to hear this message and know the invitation to live in the love of God today?  “Ball of Confusion” was released by The Temptations 55 years ago.  Ball of confusion.  That’s what the world is today.  I don’t need to list the reasons why this continues to hold true, and I suppose in many ways its always been true.  “The only person talking about love thy brother is the preacher” they sing.  So let’s go.  Let’s come before God and ask for help as we hear God’s word.

During these weeks we have we have looked at loving God with our minds (the renewing of our mind/our outlook), our hearts and souls (the part of us that goes beyond words/the seat of our emotions/wills/intentions) and this week our strength – our bodies, our physical selves.  Throughout this time we have been emphasizing two things.  The first thing is that we are not separating or compartmentalizing these three parts of ourselves.  We are talking about loving God back with the totality of our being.  The second is that the command “you shall love” is rooted and grounded in the truth that God is love and that God loves you.  To respond to God’s love with our “I love you back” is to present ourselves to God every day with an “I am yours.  Be in all I do and say this day.”  It is to let our minds and souls be saturated with the good news of Jesus; with the promises of God.  It is to live with hearts full of thanks and joy that goes beyond circumstances.  To respond to God’s love in Christ is to be brought from darkness to light, from death to life.  It means that the call on our lives is to glorify God with our body.  “For you were bought with a price,” as Paul writes, “therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Cor 6:20)

Paul is writing to the church in Corinth.  There were a lot of problems in the church in Corinth.  Paul cites a slogan that was presumably going around in Corinth in v 13 – “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other.”  The misconception here is an elevation of the soul or mind over the body, a type of mind/body dualism that put things of the soul or mind over things of the body.  With this kind of thinking in the church, people were arriving at the conclusion that how one satisfied bodily appetites did not really matter   In this case specifically it was sexual appetite and Paul is writing here of sexual morality for those in Christ.  “Shun fornication!”, writes Paul, and the fornication here is specifically sex with prostitutes.  Paul takes the opportunity to lay down some truth.  “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial.  “All things are lawful for me,” you say, but I will not be dominated by anything, writes Paul. (v12) 

Paul takes the opportunity to lay down some truth about our bodies when it comes to our faith, and it’s really quite amazing.  I don’t know that there is so much a soul/body dualism around today, though it’s persisted in the popular imagination that sees Christians sitting on clouds in a heavenly afterlife playing harps and things.  It persists maybe when we want to separate spiritual matters from temporal matters.  It persists maybe in thinking it doesn’t matter what we do with our bodies as followers of Christ as God will give us new ones anyway; or it doesn’t matter what we do with the natural world because God is going to destroy it anyway.  Paul lays down some truths which show that matter matters; that the material is not immaterial; that we are called in Christ to glorify God (in other words make God’s ways known) with our bodies.  “The body is meant not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” (6:13b)  So when it comes to the love of God, let’s get physical.

This is wild.  It’s all rooted in Jesus.  Jesus is God made flesh.  This is why we make such a big deal of Christmas.  The word made flesh and making his dwelling place among us.  Jesus died and Jesus was raised, which is why we make such a big deal of Good Friday and Easter and continue to come to the cross and to the table week after week and month after month.  What does this have to do with our bodies?  “God raised the Lord, and will also raise us by his power.” (v 14)  The promise under which we live as followers of Christ is not some future disembodied existence, but being given (by the gift of God’s grace) new bodies in a new heaven and a new earth!  Jesus’ raised body is the first fruits of this resurrection of our bodies.  Not only that, Paul goes on, but “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” (15)  We are not Jesus, but we are joined to Jesus in a way that goes beyond my ability to articulate or even comprehend – mystic union in such a way that we are the body of Christ.  Letters of Christ.  Christ’s ambassadors in order that God’s ways be made known in word and deed.  “Anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him (because there is a spiritual angle here too!).” (v 17)  The Holy Spriit is in on this too because we’re always trinitarian.  We’re talking about the importance of our bodies – “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and not you are not your own?” (19)  God with us.  God’s Spirit within us.  A gift.  I am not my own, neither am I ever on my own, because of the God to whom I belong.  I was bought by God at a great price. 

Therefore…Glorify God in your body.  Our culture has a way of valuing certain kinds of bodies.  What Paul is describing means that in Christ, our bodies have value.  No matter our age of health status.  Our bodily existence in Christ is to make Christ known.  The power of the risen Christ at work in us.  The power of the Holy Spirit at work in us.  This is an all of life thing.  This does away with any thinking that faith is a private matter, something that is just between me and God.  It’s between all of us as the body of Christ together (metaphorically speaking) and it’s between us and everyone we encounter as we go through our days.  As someone has said, “Christ’s reign must be demonstrated in every area of our lives, and there can be no area of life reserved for personal desires and practices that conflict with the sanctification that God has declared over us.”

“You are not your own,” Paul declares.  In not being my own, I find freedom.  Life in Christ, belonging to Christ is not simply being prohibited from, but being freed for.  For what are we made free?  We bring it back to John’s words.  “Little children, love one another.”   Love is the first fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22), the virtue which goes on over all other virtues (Col 3:14), and the greatest of the three gifts that abide – the one that never ends and the one we are nothing without. (1 Cor. 13:2, 8, 13)

In Christ we are made free to love.  At the cross we see what love looks like.  Why do we speak about living in the shadow of the cross?  Why do we come back to the cross time and time again?  Why do we remember Jesus’ sacrifice again and again at this table?  Why did Paul say he was Paul determined to proclaim Christ crucified?   “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us…” (1 John 3:16a)  We have been talking about loving God with our minds – our minds being renewed, being given by God a new way to perceive, a new outlook.  We talked about loving God with all our heart and soul, that part of us that goes beyond words, the inner seat of our wills/intentions/emotions.  We are talking today about love being expressed in bodily action. The cross is God’s love being expressed in action in response to our need – humanity’s need for rescue, for wholeness, for deliverance, for forgiveness.  A way being made to live in loving fellowship and communion with God and with one another.  Treasure above all treasures. Gift above all gifts. Given freely by God in Jesus.  We’ve been talking about this verse in 1 John from the beginning – “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)  Jesus, the example and enablement of the love of God.  Jesus, the message and the medium of God’s way-making love.  The Psalmist sang “You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.” (Ps 145:16)   On the cross we see the open hands of God extended in sacrificial love for the world that God had made.

How else could we live but in the same open-handed posture?  “- and we ought also to lay down our lives for one another.  How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (1 John 3:16b-17)  The love of God is more than a feeling.  The love of God is more than words.  We need to be getting this right in the church.  We are peculiar people in Christ in Christ’s church.  John Stott wrote of what love looks like in the church: “…followers of Jesus Christ, who have ‘passed from death to life’, hunger for Christian fellowship. They do not ‘give up meeting together’ (Heb. 10:25), but delight to worship and pray together, and to talk together on spiritual topics, while their personal relationships with each other are marked by unselfish and caring love.”

“Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in truth and action.”  John is not discouraging kind, comforting or encouraging words here.  Love looks like something.  The essence of love is self-sacrifice which has been perfectly made known in Jesus.  His followers are called to the same.  John gets quite specific here, which is good.  We’re not simply called to an unspecific general love for capital “H” Humanity.  Few are called to sacrifice their lives for another, thought of course this is not unknown.  John’s words are for everyone and here they are again – “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the worlds goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?”  Let us love not in word or speech, but in truth and action.  Talk is cheap. Love is not simply a sentiment and not simply words.  Love that is only words is not love at all.  The love of God in us seeks the good of others, and leads to activity on their behalf, even to the point of it costing us.  Someone has said that love is the giving impulse.  The expression of love is found in the giving of time, material goods, money, ourselves.  Recognizing that all is grace – all is God’s gift.  The literal meaning of the Greek in v 17 is reflected well in the King James Bible.  The bowels of compassion being the splanchna – the deep visceral care for others – “But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?”

“Little children, love one another.”  The message hasn’t changed.  So dear family, let us love in deeds and in truth.  May our coming to the table today signify our willing participation in the body of Christ as the body of Christ in the world.  May the self-sacrificing, giving, open-handed love of God be reflected in all we do.  Beloved of God, may this be true for us all.  Amen   

Two thousand years before all of this, Jesus spoke about loving God with the entirety of our being.  “You shall love” was the response to the question in Mark 12 about which commandment was the first.  Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’  The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’  There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)

We are in the middle of examining our response to the love of God.  We stand on the foundation of the truth that God loves us and let us not rush away from that great truth.  “Because you are precious and honoured in my sight, and I love you,” were the words of the Lord spoken through the prophet Isaiah.  “We love because he first loved us,” wrote John.  We’re in the middle of talking about the good and right and fitting and proper response on our part in the light of God’s love for us.  Our “I love you back” to God if you like.  We’re in the middle of three weeks of sitting with what our “I love you back” to God looks like.  Mind.  Heart and soul.  Strength.  Mind.  Soul or spirit.  Body.  What might it mean for us to love God with all our heart and with all our soul?  Let’s pray.

I said last week that we are not to compartmentalize these parts of ourselves that the Shema and Jesus describe here.  Heart.   Soul.  Mind.  Strength.  We’re emphasizing one each week (two this week with heart and soul which are similar if not synonymous).  They speak together of loving God back with the entirety of our being.  All that we are.  All that we have.  All that we have been gifted by God.  We spoke last week about our minds, our thoughts, our perceptions of everything.  This week we are looking at heart and soul or spirit.  It’s a part of ourself that is hard to put into words.  The centre of our being.  The seat of life.  The seat of our wills and intentions and emotions. 

Ultimately, we’re talking about our love of God that goes beyond words.  Someone has put it like this - “The spirit is the beyond-rational, emotional, experiential center of the human soul. It is where we feel our relationships.”  It is the part of us that hears words like “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” and just has to cry out “Amen!” and maybe even lift our hands if we are so inclined and maybe even burst out into song with a “He is Lord, He is Lord, He is risen from the dead and he is Lord, every knee shall bow, every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord!”

How are we feeling?  We’re talking about a joy that goes beyond circumstance or our own situations or our own personalities.  We’re talking about the sweetest name I know, as another hymn goes.  I feel that.  The sweetest name I know.  Jesus.  Don’t use it lightly.  Don’t play him cheap.  Don’t misuse it please if you care about me at all.  I found out a while ago that there used to be an ice cream place in Toronto and they called themselves “Sweet Jesus.”  Apparently, they’re only selling direct to restaurants now.  I’m not one to picket though I’m not above a personal boycott.  I remember thinking at the time “That name means so much to so many.”  Maybe the best response is to echo Jesus’ prayer for God to forgive for they do not know what they are doing.

What is the good and right and fitting and proper response of our souls to the name of Jesus?  We’re getting right to the practice and the practice is praise.  Where do I go when I want to consider praise?  Straight to the Psalms!  Last week we were speaking of the renewal of our minds.  We spoke of how the first step in that is presenting ourselves to God as living sacrifices – saying every day “Here I am Lord, I’m yours.  Be in all I do and say.”  We spoke of the entirety of our lives being an act of worship.  Today we are talking most specifically about worshipping together – about praising God together.  We can and should praise God on our own as well as in smaller numbers than might gather on a Sunday morning.  We might sing or we might speak praise on our own.  Remember “Glory be to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen” Remember “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  By his great mercy, he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”  Let those words permeate our souls and be never far from our thoughts and our mouths.  We always start with hearing and so hear the invitation.  “O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise (like a shout) to the rock of our salvation!  Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!”  This is the call to worship.  There is joy about.  Come let us sing, let us make a joyful noise, a joyful shout, a joyful cry to the rock of our salvation.  Our rock.  Our shield.  Our defender. With joy, you will draw waters from the wells of salvation, of deliverance, of rescue.  Give thanks to him, call on his name. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise.  This is our invitation.  May it be one we take up consistently and meaningfully.  I know that some people aren’t easily able or at all able to get to a Sunday gathering.  May we come to where you are and sing songs of praise together, or sing songs of praise over Zoom.  We stand in a long line of people who have sung praises to God with joy and thanks.  We’re not going to stop.  Even in our last days, we gather and play and sing praise.

Why, why do we do this?  At this point, I want to clear up a couple of possible misconceptions about praise.  There may be those who say something like “God must be very needy to need to have us praise Him all the time.”  As if we are enablers in God’s egotism.  To this, I need only say let us be careful not to make God in our own image.  I heard praise described in a sort of comedy documentary on the meaning of life I saw recently.  I won’t name it or recommend it.  I felt in the end it was rather a waste of time.  Christians were described as praising God in order to appease him. Why do we do praise and what are we missing if we don’t?  Praise of God forms us.  Praise of God shapes us.  Praise of God is not simply for the dopamine hits that music brings.  Praise of God reminds us of who God is.  We’re going to talk more about loving God with all our strength next week.  Praise of God is a physical, bodily, manifestation of our allegiance to and commitment to and participation in the new covenant sealed by Christ’s blood.  Listen again to the song – “For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods.  In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.  The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed.” (3-5)  In a world of many gods that claim to be worthy of our worship/time/attention/love, there is God.  In a world full of uncertainty, all is in his hand.  From the depths of the earth to the heights of the mountains.  It’s like us saying “I searched high and low.” In other words, everywhere.  From the depths of the earth to the height of the mountains in his hand.  In other words, everything.  There is a joy in knowing this, isn’t there?  All is in his hands.

Praising is not just about singing and joyful noise.  There’s a second call to worship in Psalm 95 which has to do with coming before God in awe and reverence.  “O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!” (6) Our corporate worship gathering is unlike any other corporate gathering.  In some church traditions, it looks like kneeling.  It may look like bowing or bowing our heads at least in holy fear and trembling (and by holy fear, we’re talking about awe and reverence of God).  May our worship services reflect both joyful noise and holy awe.  Holy silence as we’ll practice a little later when we pray.  Praise of God is an acknowledgement of who God is.  Saviour.  Deliverer.  Rescuer.  Shepherd.  “For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.” (7)  We praise God as creator.  We praise God as deliverer and name ourselves as the sheep of his caring hand.

Aren’t you glad you came to (digital) church today?!   

We’re talking about loving God with our souls/spirits.  We are saying that praise of God together is vital here.  Praise is not simply about making us feel good, warm.  Praise is a proclamation of who God is as creator and deliverer and a tangible and physical manifestation of our intention to live in radical trust in God.  When we learn by the example of others, there are two ways it may go.  We may learn by a good example and feel led to copy them.  We may also learn by a bad example and learn what not do to.  The second part of Psalm 95 sounds like a warning about the latter kind of example.  It starts with the call to hear, as we’ve been hearing from the beginning of this series (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one…”).  Hearing keeps our hearts soft.  “O that today you would listen to his voice! Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah, in the wilderness, when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.” (7b-9) What is going on here?  We read about Massah and Meribah (test and quarrel) in Exodus 17:

  From the wilderness of Sin, the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. ² The people quarrelled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ ³ But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’ ⁴ So Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.’ ⁵ The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. ⁶ I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’ Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. ⁷ He called the place Massah^[a] and Meribah, because the Israelites quarrelled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’

Dear sisters and brothers, the Lord is among us.  The call on our lives is one of radical trust in God.  The people of Israel had seen God’s deliverance, and the call was to keep on trusting, keep in hearing, keep on obeying.  Our praise together signals our trust in the faithfulness of our shepherd.

So we keep on singing together.  Paul knew about the centrality of praise in our life together in Christ.  The turning point in his letter to the Colossians comes in 2:6-7 – “As you, therefore, have received Christ Jesus, the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and build up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”  Being formed in the image of Christ is neither automatic nor instant.  Paul’s urging is always to keep on keeping on it the life.  The image of being given a new set of clothes in Christ is a familiar one.  Here it’s like an overcoat or parka of love “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”  What rules in our hearts?  “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which you were called in the one body.  And be thankful.”  What does this look like?  “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.”

Don’t worry about how in tune you are (you can learn!).  The key thing is a thankful heart.  Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.  Actual Psalms, we’re still singing them.  Hymns and spiritual songs.  Newly written.  Hundreds of years old.  Spontaneous expressions of praise or formalized musical notation.  Use it all!  It’s all part of a life in which everything we do in word or deed is done in the name of the Lord; for the praise of his glory; to make God’s ways known.

We are talking about being made new in Christ.  This has been our prayer since the year began.  “Lord, make me new.”  “Lord, make us new.”  Through these weeks of Epiphany, we are looking at what Jesus names as the greatest commandment and one like it.  You shall love the Lord.  Love Neighbour.  Today we are considering what it means to love the Lord our God with all our minds.  “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds” writes Paul in Romans 12:2.  “Therefore prepare your minds for action” writes Peter in 1 Peter 1:13 (literally “gird up the loins of your mind”).  “I’m gonna change my way of thinking,” wrote Bob Dylan in his gospel phase, “Make myself a different set of rules.  Put my best foot forward, stop being influenced by fools.”  Let’s ask for God’s help as we long to hear God’s word to us this day.  Let’s pray.

Over the following three weeks, we are looking at Jesus’ words to the sincere scribe in Mark 12 who asked Jesus, “Which commandment is the first of all?”  We read that Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’  The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’  There is no other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:29-31)  We are sitting with the love of God in its vertical aspect – God’s love for us, our love of God, or knowing God’s love – and God’s love in its horizontal aspect – loving others as ourselves, or flowing it.  To use a different analogy with respect and love to the plants that are in our sanctuary, the root and the fruit.  Divine love and its manifestation. We are looking at loving God with our heart, soul, mind and strength over three weeks.  There are two things which I would like to clarify as we begin. The first thing is that we are not compartmentalizing these three aspects of our humanity – how God made us- out (even though we’re looking at them separately).  We are talking about loving God with the entirety of our being, and considering what this looks like when it comes to our minds, our spirits, and our bodies.  Mind, spirit and body are all part of who we are.

The second thing that we always need to keep in front of us is this.  Any thought, talk, or action of loving God and loving neighbour is rooted and grounded in the truth that God loves us; the truth that the Lord is good to all and his compassion is over all he has made.  We come back to this truth again and again.  We looked at this truth at some length last week as the foundation of everything.  It is in Romans 12 that Paul begins to speak about what living in Christ looks like.  He has spent the previous 11 chapters speaking of what God has done is doing and will do in Christ and in the Holy Spirit.  He breaks out into praise (and we’ll speak more of this next week when we talk about loving God with all our spirit) and exclaims, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!  For who has known the mind of the Lord?  Or who has been his counsellor?  Or how has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?  For from him and through him and to him are all things.  To him be the glory forever.  Amen.” (11:33-36)  What a grand, sweeping statement that tells of how everything that we are comes from God.  Everything we have comes from God.  Everything that exists is the work of God’s hand, and everything that exists is sustained by God’s power and love and grace and mercy. As followers of Christ, we act in loving service to God who first loved us. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God…  It is much the same in 1 Peter.  Before talk of girding up the loins of our minds is this, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” (1:3)  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!  “Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.” People of Christ.  People of Advent.  People of hope, peace, joy, love.  People of grace.  Become grace-shaped people.  Paul is urging.  Peter is urging.  This gives us the idea that being formed in the image of Christ is not automatic, neither it is instant.  Eugene Peterson has a book on discipleship – being a student of Christ, a follower of Christ – which he calls “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.”  We follow that path in the company of Christ and the company of one another.

The renewal of our minds is not simply an intellectual exercise.  There may be an intellectual aspect to the renewal of our minds if we are called to study, called to academia, called to read works like Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics.  Some are!  I thank God for those people who are called to read Karl Barth and then write about it for people like me to read.  The renewal of our minds is not just for intellectuals or the exercise of our intellects though.  The making new of our minds gives us a whole new way of thinking.  The renewal of our minds means that transformation or renewal goes beyond the surface; beyond following a set of rules or being told what to do.  It’s to be given a whole new worldview – literally a new way of perceiving others.  Looking at others and seeing people who are made in the image of God and loved by God.  Looking at brothers and sisters in Christ and seeing brothers and sisters in Christ.  Looking at the created world and seeing a commonality because we have all been created by God.

This begins with presenting ourselves to God every day.  “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”  To say every day “I belong to you Lord.”  In so saying, knowing life.  This is our spiritual worship.  All that we are.  This is our reasonable worship.  In light of the mercy of God; in light of the way that has been made for us to live in a loving relationship with God and with one another; what else could we do?  Then this -  “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds…”  Speaking on this passage, Martin Luther King Jr. said that followers of Christ are to be  “transformed nonconformists.”  The question becomes “To what are we not conforming?”

Let us think about this.  It can be easy to be unaware of the water in which we swim.  A story is told of two young fish who are swimming along.  An older fish meets them swimming the other way.  “How’s the water boys?” he asks.  The two young fish continue on thoughtfully.  A few moments later one says “What the heck is water?”  It can be easy to forget the water in which we swim; to be so used to the messages with which we are surrounded and the ways in which we are influenced.  We are constantly exposed to messages that seek to persuade us or sway us or shape our way of thinking.  These messages may espouse consumerism – you are all about what you produce, consume, and acquire.  They may be about individualism – it’s all about you; get as much as you can; if it feels good, do it.  Many voices and images simply vie to monetize our attention, often by creating anger and division and stratification.  Someone has paraphrased Romans 12:2 like this, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-make you so that your whole attitude of mind is changed.”  When we talk about the world or “this age” in this way, we are talking about life lived without regard for God as creator and sustainer and source of light and life.  “Let your minds be renewed,” says Paul. 

“Prepare your minds for action,” says Peter.  Be alert.  Let us examine the messages that surround us that purport to speak of what is most important or what is true.  “Set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.” God has a plan in place for deliverance, for wholeness, for restoration, for the renewal of all things.  This is the promise and we stand on that promise.  Peter is literally saying to gird the loins of your mind.  This is an ancient expression.  It means tuck up your robe into your belt so you can be ready to move, ready for action.  The people of Israel were given a promise of deliverance in Egypt.  For the Passover meal, they were told this, “This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand: and you shall eat it hurriedly.  It is the Passover of the Lord.” (Ex 12:11)  Be alert in our trust in God’s promises.  It’s easy to get lulled into complacency or inaction.  Spiritual lassitude.  It’s easy to numb ourselves in any one of the variety of ways in which we may choose to numb ourselves.  Prepare your minds for action.  Take off your warm-up suit, cognitively speaking, it’s game time!

God will transform our minds, our way of thinking, our way of perceiving, and our way of seeing.  We can allow ourselves to be open to this transformation.  We can put ourselves in situations and in relationships that will allow the Holy Spirit to do the Holy Spirit’s transforming work within us.  Being in God’s word each day is one such way.  Listening to people talk about God’s word is another.  It may be a podcast.  It may be reels.  We may find songs of praise to be a way that our minds are open to renewal and transformation.  We may memorize verses that have particular meaning for us.  Write them down.  Text them to yourself.  We may find in the middle of a sleepless night that reciting the 23^rd Psalm is a way that leaves ourselves open to the renewal of our minds.  We may want to be in conversation with brothers and sisters in Christ through books.  I said that the renewal of our minds is not a purely intellectual exercise, but it can be if this is how God has made us.  Dennis Bruce gave me this book after a visit with him and his dear wife Muriel.  He said that trying to get through it was like trying to get through a thicket.  I have to say I felt pretty pious pulling it out of my bag on the subway!  I have yet to get through it but I hope to.  I was glad of Dennis’ encouragement.  We need to be encouraging one another in the renewal of our minds.  This whole mind renewal thing is not simply for our own benefit or peace of mind if you like.  There is a larger purpose to it, which Paul points out in v2.  “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”   We are talking at this point about what I like to call “God’s big will” or the things that God wills for each and every one of us.  What does God have to say about God’s big will?  Micah 6:8 is good here – “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”  To seek God’s will is to ask the question “What does the love of God call for in this situation?  What does a grace-shaped life look like here?  What does the mercy of God call for here?”  What does loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and loving your neighbour as yourself call for here?’

If you are thinking at this point “This is all very well and good, but I’d like a concrete example of this kind of renewed thinking of which Paul is writing,” – Paul provides such an example. It’s for the church.  When it comes to discerning the will of God - what is good and acceptable and perfect – we are not talking about an individual exercise.  Iron sharpens iron, as the Proverb goes.  Being part of a Christian community is vital to being made new, to flourishing.  When it comes to how we think in community, Paul says this, “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.”  We belong to Christ.  We belong to one another.  Community unified in Christ.  Diversity in unity in Christ.  Do not be high-minded.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he as in the very form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself…  The church is surely one of the few is not only places where we will be told it is not all about us.  It is not, in fact, all about me in Christ.  Who we are in the church, who we are in Christ – beloved of God, recipients of God’s mercy, recipients of gifts, recipients of forgiveness – are all an expression of God’s great grace toward us.

A new way of thinking/seeing/perceiving God, neighbour, and ourselves, whose outflow is love and God and love of people.  God grant that we all may be so renewed. Amen   

I’m glad now to have these birds of paradise in our sanctuary this season of Epiphany in the church calendar.  This is the time when we kind of catch our breath between Advent and Lent.  The colour for this time is also green.  Isn’t this welcome?  We’re in what I like to call the dog days of winter.  The so-called saddest day of the year is coming up (Blue Monday January 20^th, I checked).  What I’m liking so much about these plants is the reminder that in the middle of a lot of cold and meagre foliage, there is life.  There is light.  There is Christ.

Whose words we hear.  The invitation that is before us is to figuratively sit down in the green grass (think Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 or Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6) at Jesus’s feet and listen to him.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we begin this morning.

Over Advent we considered an exciting and hopeful question about life in Christ – “What then will I become?  For the hand of the Lord is with me.”  We’ve applied the words spoken at the birth of John the Baptist to each and every one of us in Christ (or maybe it’s better to say we’ve applied ourselves to these words).  In what ways will I be formed in the image of Jesus?   Over the coming 6 weeks, we are going to consider a parallel question – “How may it happen - being formed in very image of Jesus?”  Our foundational text for the series is Mark 12:28-31.  Last words can take on a special significance, and this is the last of four answers that Jesus gives as he is asked questions in the Temple during the week between his entry into Jerusalem and his death and resurrection.  The questions before this have been in the context of disputes – chief priests, scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees trying to “get” Jesus as it were.  This last question seems to come from a place of openly and sincerely wanting to know the answer.  May we come with the same sincerity and openness.  Here is the story: One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?”  Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’  The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’  There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31)

1. “You Shall Love: Loving God, Loving Neighbour”.  It is no wonder that studies continue to show that relationships and connectedness are key to human flourishing.  This should come as no surprise to us, because this is how God made us.  We have been created to live in loving communion/fellowship/participation with God and with one another!  Someone has said relationships are not an option, they are the fabric of life.  Fullness of life is found in the love of God and the love of others.

I am aware that this might not be necessarily news to us, but may it always be new to us as God makes us new.  Loving relationships, just like a plant, need to be cultivated in order that they may flourish (and produce fruit) and not wither.  My Christmas desire for all of us was that we be in a good place, blessed, flourishing, doing well.  Over weeks 2 to 4 of this series, we are going to consider the vertical aspect of our loving relationship with God.  We will consider what it means for us as individuals, and for us a community of faith, to love God with our mind, our spirit, and our body. That’s the next three weeks.  In the final two weeks, we are going to consider the horizontal aspect of loving relationships with one another.  First with those who are near to us, or “easy to love” as the song goes.  We are going to consider what love looks like toward those who are not so near to us (metaphorically speaking).  Throughout these weeks, we will talk about practices in which we are invited to engage individually and together, daily, weekly, monthly in some cases. 

Before all of that though, is an invitation to remember who we are.  I find it welcome as we talk about catching our breath after the Advent season and walking in faith together through these weeks of Epiphany.  Epiphany means manifestation, and we want the love of God to be made manifest in our lives don’t we, in the same way that fruit is manifested in trees and vines and all the places in which fruit is manifested. Remember who we are. Listen.  This is always where we must start before we consider who we are called to be and what we are called to do.  When Jesus answers the scribe, he quotes a Jewish prayer known as the Shema, prayed morning and evening.  We find it in Deuteronomy 6:4.  Listen to how it begins.  “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”  Hear.  Listen.  Soak this in like a plant take in water.  Let those words from the prophet Isaiah continue to echo for us.  Write them down and put them somewhere you’ll see them.  “For you are precious and honoured in my sight, and I love you.” (Is 43:5a)  I was running the title of this series past Nicole (because she is wise and I have gained a certain wisdom in 25 years of marriage).  “You Shall Love” I told her.  “I don’t know,” she said, “It sounds kind of commandy which is unlike you.”   “True enough,” I said, “But it’s Jesus’ command and maybe we need to hear it.  Maybe I need to hear it.”  I can’t be the only one.  Before the command though there is this great truth. “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)  Loving God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength – in other words with the entirety of our being – is rooted and grounded in and motivated by the boundless, unfathomable, transforming love that has been poured out in Christ Jesus.  Being formed in the image of Jesus (we call this spiritual formation) is coming to live in this love ever more deeply, that God’s love might flow from us.  Know it to flow and show it!  Love for others, near or far, is the overflow of God’s love – love divine all loves excelling, joy from heaven to earth come down – the overflow of God’s love in our lives, spilling over or maybe even gushing out from us.  Love for God and love for others is not something we have to find within ourselves or call up out of nowhere.  Someone has put it like this: “These two laws — ​ love God and loving others — ​ are the greatest because they epitomize the nature and character of God… Obedience to God is not about making sure every “i” is dotted and every “t” is crossed so that we are worthy to enter God’s presence. True obedience comes from a heart that has experienced God’s amazing grace and been transformed by it.”  As followers of Christ we are not loving out of a sense of obligation or duty or fear, but as an act of thanks and wonder and awe and praise at what love the Father has lavished on us so that we might be called children of God. God’s love is where we have our roots.  The evidence is in the fruit.  The root and the fruit!  I told you this plant thing was a great image.  Hear how Jesus describes it in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6 – “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit.  Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush.  The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:43-45)

To be transformed by the love of God in us - by the Holy Spirit doing Holy Spirit transforming work within us – is for there to be a sameness or an integrity between our roots and our fruit.  It just makes sense.  To be transformed by the Holy Spirit is to have our hearts renovated, our wills and motivated shaped by self-sacrificing other-serving love.  All of this because we are rooted and grounded in the love of Christ.  Just like trees.  Remember “I shall not be moved. Like a tree planted by the water.”  This is the image with which the Psalms start.  “They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.  In all that they do, they prosper.”  (Ps 1:3)    Here’s how the prophet Jeremiah put it: “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord.  They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream.  It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.” (Jer 17:7-8).  This is the thing about our lives.  We will know drought.  We will know heat.  Drought and heat will come.  Actor James Woods spoke wisdom in the wake of the Pacific Palisades fires this week.  “One day you’re swimming in the pool, and the next day it’s all gone.”  It’s easy to be at our best when things are going well, no?  How easy is it to become irritable or short-tempered or impatient or self-focussed when things are difficult?  Our lives are in many ways a series of comings and goings.  Seasons too come and go.  The invitation here for us, and it is before us every day, is to remain rooted and grounded in the One who is the source of life, just as water is to a tree.  This is to know life as it is meant to be lived. 

I was speaking to a volunteer not long ago at our Out of the Cold ministry down at Trinity Square behind the Eaton Centre.  He told me that while he knew it was a cliché he would say it anyway – “I get so much more out of this than I put in.”  I told him that sometimes cliches become clichés because of the fundamental truth they contain.  I also said that in my understanding of God and life, God made us to serve one another.  This is why we feel such rightness in our turning toward others who are in need of help.  The Holy Spirit at work!

This is what we are made for and this is right and good, to be transplanted in the love of God like a tree that is transplanted by a life-giving stream.  There are things to do, practices of which we will speak over the coming weeks.  Prayer.  Hearing God’s voice in God’s Word.  Worship.  Praise.  Service.  As we close today, though, let us rest.  Let us rest in Jesus’ invitation from John 15.  This is the last of 7 “I am” statements that Jesus makes about himself in John’s Gospel (and there can be a significance in last words).  These are words of life dear friends.  Fullness of life.  This is what we were made for.  “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.” (15:1)  Hear the invitation this and every day, “Abide in me as I abide in you.”  (15:4)  We ourselves in Jesus.  Jesus himself in us, the hope of glory.  The unfathomable mystery of our participation in the life of God Father, Son and Spirit that is characterized first and foremost by divine love.  “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.  I am the vine, you are the branches.  Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” (15:4b-5)

As we sit in the green grass at Jesus’ feet, let us first hear, then take up that invitation.  Abide in me.  Remain in me.  Live in me.  Rest in me.  This is life!  Tell your loved ones.  Tell your friends.  Show your loved ones.  Show your friends/neighbours near and far.  “You shall love” is a command, but it is founded in the good news of “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)  This is the one who is speaking to us.  This is the one who does not leave us to our own devices, but lovingly enables all that he calls us to be and do.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

Amen 

We also know that the fresh start goes beyond outward appearances, whether it’s ourselves or a tidy home (or office).  At the end of last year, I spoke about Cid Latty from CBOQ who reminded us that revitalization for any church – new life, renewal – must start with individual hearts being made new.  If you are with me on this, may it be our prayer as we start 2025 and as we make our way with God and together through 2025 – “Lord make me new.  Lord make us new.”

God will honour that prayer because making things new is what God does.  “I am about to do a new thing” God declares.  “Look, I am making all things new” God will one day declare.  We crave a newness that goes beyond our own resolve.  To whom or what do we turn?

What does God have to say to us about all this as we start a new year?  What kind of word from God might we need to hear as we seek a fresh start and maybe even transformation this January 5th, 2025?  Let’s ask for God’s help as we look at God’s word this morning.

We’re in the second part of Isaiah here in chapter 43.  These words are being addressed to a people in exile.  Many are suffering and facing a lot of uncertainty.  This section starts with the word “But” – (“But now, thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob).  Whenever we see a word like “But” we need to look before it to see what’s going on.  We have these verses in chapter 42:18-19 – “Listen, you that are deaf; and you that are blind, look up and see!  Who is blind but my servant, or deaf like my messenger whom I send?  Who is blind like my dedicated one or blind like the servant of the Lord?  He sees many things but does not observe them; his ears are open, but he does not hear.”

I’m often saying that we live with many tensions in the Christian life.  Paradoxes.  Seeming incompatibilities if you like.  The Kingdom of God is here.  The Kingdom of God is coming.  God is with us.  God is coming.  Here we have quite a jarring one - the servants of God, God’s messengers, the dedicated ones are at the same time blind and deaf.

Let us sit with that for a few moments.  This is not to beat ourselves up but to help us recognize our need for grace; our need to be made new. If we examine ourselves honestly, we know the truth of this tension between God’s love and own stubbornness/failings.  We know the meagreness of our prayer life.  We know about our inattentiveness to God, our…  Fill in the blank.  It’s a paradox because normally when we think of servants of God or devotees of God or witnesses of God, spiritual blindness and spiritual deafness are not the first things that spring to mind.  This people of God were in exile with no way out, no way to restore themselves.  A way out - a way to newness or a new situation - would not be found through their own ingenuity or resourcefulness or piety or resolve.  This is the bad news.

Here is the good news though.  A way out has been provided!  We just celebrated his coming.  How is it that we hold the tensions that I’m talking about in tension as we follow Christ?  How is it that we’re able to hold together these seeming paradoxes of the already-not yetness of the Kingdom of God, of joy and sorrow, of being servants of God and our blindness and deafness?  We hold them together in the light of Christ.  The Advent Candles have been put away but we’re still walking in the light of Christ.  In the midst of our resolutions for 2025, let us resolve to continue to call on God’s name together, to give thanks, together, to make God’s ways know in our words and deeds together.  We hold these tensions together in the light of God’s love for us, in the light of God’s mercy toward us.   We hold the tensions together in the light of Christ’s birth and life and death and resurrection and promised return. 

Hear the word of God addressed to us in the middle of our tension and the middle of our waiting.  We might expect to hear words of judgment in the light of blindness and deafness.  Instead, we hear words of light and life.  “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel.”  We crave the new and no wonder as we have been made in the image of the creative God.  The God who not only creates but forms and isn’t that good news, we who seek to be formed?  “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”  This is the God to whom we belong.  Listen to these promises of God.  I will be with you.  The rivers will not overwhelm you.  The fire will not consume you.  For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.  I give Egypt as your ransom.  In Christ God gives himself as our ransom. We give thanks for this when we gather around the table as we’ll do later this morning.  In Christ God gives himself as our ransom.  Why?  How could such a thing be?

“Because you are precious in my sight and honoured, and I love you.” (v 4)

God created us and forms us to be loved and to love.  What better way to start the new year than to hear those words?  Being in Christ means to be at home no matter our circumstances.    God goes on to speak through the prophet about bringing God’s people home,  “Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north. ‘Give them up.’ and to the south, ‘Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth – everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” (Is 43:5-7)

This is where our role comes in quite pointedly.  “I’ve created you for My glory,” God says.  In other ways, I have created you to make my ways known. God’s ways.  Peace.  Mercy.  Forgiveness.  Justice. Compassion.  Love.  God has created us and forms us to make God’s ways known.  We may say “Yes, yes, we know this” but do we know?

Those lines we heard from ch 42 are echoed in a type of courtroom scene here in v 8 - “Bring forth the people who are blind, yet have eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears!”  Then in v 10 – “You are my witnesses, says the Lord, and my servants whom I have chosen.”  “Us?” we say?  “Yes, you!” God says.  We can’t help but think of the words of Jesus here.  “You will be my witnesses from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth.”  Those who are blind.  Those who are deaf - yet look at this hopeful note – yet have eyes, yet have ears! We look at ourselves and say how ill-equipped we are for such a task, and yet, and yet, and yet. We have eyes, we have ears.  And we pray God help us to see, newly.  God help us to hear, newly.

That we may be a people who make your ways known. May that be our prayer friends.  The promise here is that walls would be destroyed. Quite literally here in Babylon’s case. V14 -  “For your sake, I will send to Babylon and break down all the bars, and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned to lamentation.”  This is what God does.  God knocks down gates that entrap.  God breaks chains that ensnare.  God destroys walls that confine and makes free.  Walls of addiction, compulsion, greed, fear, resentment, ruined relationships, hostility.  Their shouts of triumph will turn to lament as God sets free; as God brings life.  As God makes new.

This is what God does.  Remember that time God made a way through the water?  V16 - “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior, they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick.”  We’re talking about deliverance from Egypt here.  Remember.  How has God delivered you?  When we stand here today and say with the prophet of old “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” What are the things that the Lord has brought us through?  What are the things that the Lord has brought you through?  We remember.  “Remember the former things of old,” we read in Isaiah 46:9.

Also don’t remember.  Another paradox! V18 -  “Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old.  I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”  Is the Bible contradicting itself?  Not at all! We are to remember the past but we are not to be tied to it.  The past can and does teach us.  Someone put it like this – “the past can teach and illustrate but it must not bind.  The Lord always has greater things in store, he is revealed in the past, but he is always more than the past revealed.”  Let us not be content to rest in old glories.  Let us not be tied to ways of doing and being because that is what we’ve always done or that is who we have always been.  I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  We may be partially blind – we see in a mirror dimly for now - and we may be hard of hearing (figuratively and in some cases literally), but we have eyes and we have ears. What a hopeful thing that is – to consider that God can cause us to see and cause us to hear!  Haven’t we seen so much of God doing a new thing among us over the last 5 years?  New ways of being together.  New ways of turning toward God.  New hearts   Remember the former things of old but do not let us stop there.  Remember when we considered the question asked at the birth of little John the Baptist – “What then will this child become?”  What then will this man become?  What amazing things might God do in my heart?  What amazing things might God do in and through us as we pray “Make us new!”  Standing with our heads raised.  Attentive to God’s word to us.  Alert to present realities.  Responsive to opportunities that God puts in front of us to make His ways known.  Anticipating wondrous possibilities. 

How exciting!  Life in the impossible possibility of God.  Who is with us?  Who created and forms us? Who calls us by name?  In whose sight we are precious.  Who loves us?  We may go into 2025 with a lot of question marks in our personal lives, in our professional lives, in our church lives.  What have we to fear when we go with such a God as this?

Who brings new life.  This is what we were made for.  Love and praise and making God know in all our ways as we go through our days.  Our God who brings life.  We have in this passage a lot of images of things that evoke the opposite of life.  Horse and chariot.  Instruments of war. Wilderness.  Bareness.  Mighty waters. Destructive forces.  What are the same kind of images which assail us today?  Bombing.  Drone strikes.  Natural disasters.  Shootings.  Stabbings.  Vehicles turned into weapons on crowded streets.  How do we respond? 

In the midst of everything, God is transforming His world and we hear this promise – “I work and who can hinder it?” God calls us to take part.  Someone has written, “The ultimate meaning of life has its source in the one God, the Creator, and Redeemer of all that is, who draws creation to wholeness through the lure of unbounded love…”

God calls us to take part in this restoring/transforming work.  Let our gathering around the table this morning be the signal of our “Yes” to this call. Deaf though we may be. Blind though we may be; in God’s mercy, we are transformed.  May God help our eyes to see and our ears to hear.  May God help us to make the ways of God known, to make the love of God known as we go about our days.  We look forward to the day when that voice from the throne will say “Look I am making all things new.”  In the meantime, let this be our prayer.  “Lord make me new.  Lord make us new.”

We love him because he first loved us. Let us carry these words with us as go into 2025 friends – “Because you are precious in my sight and honoured, and I love you.”  May we be resolute in desiring to know this love in a new and transforming way, that we might make it known in all we do and say.  May these things be true for all of us.  Amen.

I have to say I’m really, really glad to be able to come to worship together on Christmas Eve, to stop in all the frenzied activity that, for so many, defines the season. I read someone say recently that they’re not sure how much rejoicing goes on at Christmas. Lots of frolicking, for sure, but how much rejoicing? How much sitting with deep joy? 

So I’m glad we have the chance to sit, particularly with Luke’s telling of the Christmas story.  Many of the traditions which we love and with which we’re so familiar are not here.  I realize I’m on potentially dangerous ground here, and by no means am I one to decry tradition.  On this year’s Christmas episode of “Abbot Elementary” (a show set in a primary school in Philadelphia), Jacob Hill, a young teacher (who is a well-meaning but annoying advocate for social justice), inserts himself into a Christmas Lunch celebration/tradition put on by two of his fellow veteran teachers, Barbara and Melissa.  He proceeds throughout the dinner to tell them everything that is wrong about Christmas, from the consumerism to the co-opting of pagan rituals.  Barbara and Melissa end up suddenly feeling the need to get some air despite the fact that it’s below zero outside (because it gets cold in Philadelphia, too).

I don’t want to be a Christmas Crank tonight of all nights.  I do want us to notice how things are stripped away in our story.  There are no animals mentioned.  No ox and donkey looking lovingly down at the manger.  There’s no little drummer boy accompanying the shepherds (or sheep, for that matter).  There’s no heavenly glow at the birth scene (though there’s certainly a glow in nearby fields).  There’s no description of a bleak midwinter night.  There is a manger.  There is Jesus and his family.  There are shepherds and angels.  There is praise.  There is pondering.

I’m glad for the chance to ponder.  That much loved carol talks about a town that lies still, that sleeps a deep and dreamless sleep.  Our reality is much different, isn’t it?  I wonder if anyone went out shopping today (or maybe last Saturday).  People searching for the perfect gift.  People arguing over parking spots.  People planning gatherings.  People who are wondering where their hopes and fears are going to be met.  What is it that we hope for?  What is it that we fear?  We’re all aware of forces at work in our world which are beyond our control.  There is something or someone to whom we answer – jobs, the market, families, influence (influencers), sports, entertainment, mindless distraction…  Imperial forces were at work in the lives of Mary and Joseph.  The force to whom everyone was answerable was that of Rome.  The Emperor Augustus mentioned in the first line of the story.  The saviour of the world, as he was known.  The one who brought peace to the empire.  But at what cost? Which brings the question – where do we look for peace, and at what cost?  In our story, we have a figure who lays in direct opposition to false claims of peace-bringing – to false claims of power to which all else must bow.  The figure has been laid in a manger.  Mary and Joseph had heard the announcement.  They accepted the announcement.  They had set out on a journey together, trusting.  They struggled together to find a space in a busy and distracted world.

They found the space.  May we be like them?  I’m thankful for the opportunity to find space such as this.  Space to ponder.  Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.  Someone has said, “… God’s activity in the world, in its mystery and surprise, sometimes requires discernment that is achieved only with difficulty, even among those specially favoured by God.”  A lot of our frenetic activity over the past weeks has been about us.  This story reminds us that the story in which we are invited to live is not primarily about us.  This story is centred on what God is doing, and can’t be reduced to our own expectations (great or small as they may be), or our own traditions even.  This story reminds us of the one whom we are invited to make our centre, and it is most definitely by design that the Christ candle sits in the middle of the Advent wreath.  The still point of the turning world; let us cease from all our strivings and adore.  Jesus – “The Lord is salvation.”  Emmanuel – “God is with us.”  God lives and God gives in order that we might be brought back to Him, made whole, forgiven, made new.

Made watchful.  The shepherds are sometimes thought of as lazy or drowsy, which gave rise, no doubt, to carols like “Shepherds, Shake Off Your Drowsy Sleep.” They weren’t lazy, they were hard at work.  In the night.  In the darkness.  They were watching.  In that watching,g they were ready to greet the heavens bursting open and God bursting through.  I wonder if Jesus was hearing echoes of the story of his birth that his mother might have told him when he would tell his followers years later, “Be alert at all times, praying…”  Be watchful.  Be alert. 

We talked about signs last Sunday.  Seeing signs of the holy, of God in the seemingly mundane (and I say “seeming” as in a world in which the Word was made flesh, is anything really simply mundane?).  May we be watchful for signs of God’s activity around us.  There is nothing extraordinary about a child wrapped in bands of cloth – it was common practice to make sure the little baby’s limbs would straighten.  There was something unusual about a child being found in a manger – a place where animals were nourished.  I don’t want us to miss this tonight.  The shepherds come to praise “God is with us” in a place where animals come to eat.  The one who is called the Word of Life will later on call himself the Bread of Life, and we will gather around to praise him and adore him and to eat.

So may our gathering around His table be a sign of our praise and adoration as we ponder the wonder of “God is with us.”  The place where hopes and fears, sorrow and joy, are met as God reconciles us to Himself.  The manger is not the end of the story.  More of the story is told by poet Richard Wilbur.  As we close, let us listen to his “Christmas Hymn”:

A stable lamp is lighted Whose glow shall wake the sky; The stars shall bend their voices, And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry, And straw like gold shall shine; A barn shall harbour heaven, A stall become a shrine.

This child through David’s city Shall ride in triumph by; The palm shall strew its branches, And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry, Though heavy, dull, and dumb, And lie within the roadway To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken, And yielded up to die; The sky shall groan and darken, And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry For stony hearts of men: God’s blood upon the spearhead, God’s love refused again.

But now, as at the ending, The low is lifted high; The stars shall bend their voices, And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry In praises of the child By whose descent among us The worlds are reconciled.

Amen

A new year is almost here, and today I have a New Year’s blessing to share.  We’re thinking of home today, and our experience of home may have differed over the holiday.  For some of us, it may be that nothing much changed in terms of routine and where we were physically.  For others, we may have left our homes to be somewhere else.  For others, our homes may have been transformed by company. Our church home was certainly transformed by decoration and light, and company!  This time of year, for many, has been a series of comings and goings.  I pray that we’ve all been blessed in these comings and goings.  In many ways, our lives are a series of comings and goings, aren’t they? 

Here is our New Year’s blessing,g and it comes from the truth sung in Psalm 121:8.  “The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.”  May God keep you in all your going out and your coming in every day.  In the presence of God With Us, may you always feel that you are at home, no matter where you may be.

It’s wonderful to see the sense of being at home reflected in our gathering together, isn’t it?  A few years ago, I was standing in our Friendship Room after a Sunday service.  We were celebrating a child's dedication with lunch together.  As I looked around the room, I saw joy reflected in faces; I saw people from all over the world; I saw people of vastly different life experiences, ages, and backgrounds; I saw people caring for one another.  Someone came up to me and said – “This reminds me of home!”

What does it mean for a place to feel like home?  No matter our personal experience of home, we have an idea of what home should be like. Home is a place where you are accepted, safe, cared for, caring, free of judgement, free to be yourself, free to be vulnerable – in a word, loved. 

I pray that God makes, continues to make) this faith community is such a place.  I pray the same thing for all the people from different faith communities with whom we may have gathered over the past four weeks.  It’s wonderful to see it.  A young man came into our Christmas Eve Candlelight service and stood at the back of the church.  He was here from Saudi Arabia visiting family and decided to come into the church.  I spoke to him after we had sung “Silent Night” together.  He told me, “This feels like a place of great peace.”  How thankful to God this made me!

I am thankful.  I also know that something like this may be said by the skeptic: It’s very easy to feel that kind of thing when the church is awash in candlelight, and those familiar carols are resounding through the place, and we’re having extra time together to share meals, and open houses and give presents, and donate to good causes. 

What happens when we go back to life?  Back to our usual comings and goings.  Back to the mundane.  It was very much the same in the stories we’re looking at today.  We read about Samuel’s parents – Hannah and Elkanah.  At the beginning of the story of Samuel, Hannah is longing for a child, going to the temple of the Lord at Shiloh annually, weeping and praying.  She is vowing to dedicate a child to the Lord’s service.  All of this is so unusual that the priest Eli thought she must be drunk.  Little Samuel is, and Hannah bursts into song – “My heart exults in the Lord, my strength is exalted in my God… He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honour. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and on them he has set the world.” (1 Sam 2:2a, 8)  This should be reminding us of another song at the announcement of another miracle birth!  “My soul magnifies the Lord,” Mary sang, and we sang, “and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.” (Luke 1:46-47)  In the story of Samuel’s birth and growing up, and in the story of Jesu’s birth and growing u,p we have two sides.  On one side, we have miracle births and people singing, along with angelic visitations and angels singing.  On the other side we have people going about their everyday comings and goings.  Hannah coming to the temple with a little ephod she made for her son - no doubt having him try it on to see how it fit and what adjustments needed to be made.  Everyday stuff!  In the story of Jesus’ birth,  we have Zechariah (John the Baptist’s father) going about his regular service to God in the temple. We have an unexpected pregnancy.  We have the shepherds returning to their work.  A return to the mundane.

Here's the thing about the mundane, though.  Mundane can have a fairly negative connotation.  Dull.  Uninteresting.  Workaday, as people used to say.  Here’s the thing, though, about the event that we have just celebrated and we will continue to celebrate, God helping us.  Nothing is the same.  God is with us.  Nothing is merely mundane in the sense of dull or uninteresting or workaday drudgery.  Life needs no longer be that way when we are walking in the light of Christ – the light of hope and peace and joy and love.  Let us continue to remind each other of this truth and ponder it in our hearts individually and collectively.  Living in the hope of Christ which looks forward to the renewal and restoration of all things.  At the same time, we stand together with our heads up, asking God to show us where He is working around us and giving us the strength and will to join Him.  Living in the light of the one who is our peace, asking, “What kind of person might God make me?” and praying, “Make me a channel, a delivery system if you like, of your peace, Lord.”  Living in the light of a deep-rooted joy that is not dependent on circumstance, joy that recognizes mourning and loss, joy that is based on the saving and delivering acts of our saving and delivering God.  Who loves us.  Who carried us like a shepherd carries a lamb close to his chest.       

God who is with us.  God who has entered our world.  Mundane originally means “of the world” or “wordly” from the same Latin root that gives us mundo in Spanish or monde in French.  Nothing is simply “of the world” because Jesus came, Jesus is here, and Jesus will come again.  The Lord will keep you going out and you coming in from this time on and forevermore.  This is the promise with which I want each and every one of us to walk with as we enter a new year.  Let us walk into the new year in the continuing light of Christ, which the darkness cannot overcome.  Let us walk into the New Year with a strong sense of being at home in the love of Christ – being accepted, cared for, caring, free to be ourselves, free to be vulnerable, loved.

1. This is the other thing about the truth of God with us.  Being formed into the image of the one who is with us.  Because we have heard the good news.  The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.  Because we wondered in awe, along with Elizabeth, “And why should this happen to me?”  That salvation/deliverance/rescue should come to me?   Because we responded with Mary when she was told about her part to play in God’s saving plan, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.  Let it be with me according to your word.”  Because we heard the news that came to the shepherds when heaven broke through as if it couldn’t contain the joy of the angels.  They had seen God do wonderful things.  They had seen God lay the foundations of the earth when the morning stars sang together, and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy!  They had seem God appear in fire to Moses and speak to others through messengers and speak through prophets.  They had seen God’s spirit rest on people.  But look what God had done now as a baby’s cry pierces the night.  He is with them!  We went to the manger with the shepherds to worship and adore, and now we return, glorifying and praising God for all we have seen and heard.    

How could we not be changed? 

Someone has said this about those shepherds who return glorifying and praising God: “They didn’t just return to their work, they returned with glory.  They returned with praise.  It makes you wonder what it was like in those fields in the region around Bethlehem. Was there spontaneous singing breaking out at unusual times during the day?  Was there more laughter than usual, or laughter that lifted up instead of knocking down?  Was there a larger vision that didn’t ignore the needs of the sheep, but saw serving sheep as somehow holy work now, God-infused work, instead of a chore fit only for folks on the margin?”

We don’t know the answer to those questions, but I like to think all those things were true.  We know that we can go home, whatever that looks like for us, as people who are at home living in the transforming strength of God with us.  We know that we can go home transformed, carrying the things we have shared, like worship together, the love of family and friends, old traditions, and new traditions. So we go home as people who are at home on our way.  As we go, let us be reminded that in all our comings and goings, the Lord will keep us from this time on and forevermore.  Thanks be to God for the wonderful gift of his loving presence, and Happy New Year to you all!

Amen                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

1. Which brings us to today.  Christmas is almost here.  We are living in the light of God’s love, Advent people.

I have one desire for everyone who is hearing these words this day.  I’m not going to have a chance to speak to you again before the 25^th, so I will call this my Christmas desire for each and every one of you.  My desire for each and every person who is listening to these words this morning is that you may live in a good situation, that you may be in a good place, that you may live secure, that you may live, to use the language of scripture, blessed.  No matter our circumstances.  That we may be favoured.  “Greetings, favoured one!” is how the angel Gabriel greeted young Mary in Luke 1:28.  Let us hear those words directed at us.  “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord,” is what Elizabeth exclaims with a loud cry in Luke 1:45.  We are hearing these words together.  Our personal situations may differ wildly, from great joy and great expectations to great sorrow and uncertainty.  No matter where we are this day, there is a promise before us.  The light of God’s love is before us.  Let’s ask God for help as we hear good news this day. 

It's good that children have a special role to play in our worship services at this time of year.  The imagination of a child is a wonderful thing.  Imagination that turns housecoats into robes, tea towels into head coverings, tinsel into halos.  The wonder of a child is a precious thing.  It’s unsullied in a way, isn’t it?  The excitement of children when it’s almost Christmas.  “How many more sleeps?” and all of that.  The ability to look forward to something whose coming of which we are certain.  Promises made.  Promises kept.  Children take promises very seriously, and we want to be careful with them, don’t we?  A pinky swear makes a promise doubly sure.  When we get older, our view of promises may become a little less idealized.  Promises made to us are broken.  Promises made by us are broken.  People of Advent.  We live as people of God’s promise.  When we consider the faithfulness of God, we consider this great truth that I cannot put any more simply: When God makes a promise, God keeps that promise.  Perhaps I could put it more simply: God does what He says.

Also, God loves us. 

May both of these truths be a cause for wonder and awe for us this Christmas.  We’ve been listening to the prophets telling it like it is through these weeks of Advent.  Listen to God speaking through Isaiah – “Because you are precious in my sight and honoured and I love you…” (43:4)  Listen to God speak through Jeremiah of return and restoration and renewal  where God’s love and God’s faithfulness meet – “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.” (31:3)

God’s love is shown and known by God’s presence.  God is with us.  Emmanuel.  We get this on a personal level.  What kind of love do we have if we are not present to one another?  God’s love has always been and will always be about God’s presence.  We want to be in a good situation this Advent!  Favoured.  Secure.  Blessed.  Go with God.  It’s always been about going with God.  This has always been the promise.  When God tells Moses to lead the people of Israel to the land that had been promised, God makes another promise, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” (Ex 33:14)  In Isaiah 40, we hear this of God, “He will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.” (Is 40:11)  God does what he says!  We want to be in a good situation.  Let us go with our shepherd – “And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.  And they shall live secure, for now, he shall be great to the ends of the earth, and he shall be the one of peace;” (Mic 5:4-5). God is with us.  The last words of Jesus recorded in Matthew’s Gospel – “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  At the end of the age (because we look forward too), God with us in a whole new way, a voice from the throne saying “See, the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.” (Rev 21:3) So we say and sing, “Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emannuel!”  God with us is a good place to be.

So the word of the Lord comes to Mary through the angel Gabriel, “In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David.  The virgin’s name was Mary.  And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favoured one!  The Lord is with you.” (Luke 1:26-28) Mary is perplexed, and at times, we may be perplexed and even vexed and ask questions and wonder things like, “God involves us in his whole saving plan?!”  Because we know us.  We may say or hear, “Why doesn’t God simply just snap his fingers and make all this salvation and justice happen, and we could just watch it happen?”

We may wonder such a thing, but do not let us miss the invitation to join in God’s promise.  Here is the thing about the story of Mary and Elizabeth that we read this Advent.  Mary who asked, “How can this be?”  Elizabeth who asked, “Why has this happened to me?”   It’s the same thing about the story of Moses or Gideon or Isaiah, who said things like “I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” and “But sir, how can I deliver Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family” and “Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips”.  The answer keeps coming back from God – “I am with you.”

God involves people in God’s grand salvation/deliverance/rescue plan.  The love of God is not coercive. You can’t coerce love, no matter how many autocrats are called “Dear Leader.”  To live in the love and grace, and mercy of God means to be taken outside of ourselves.  To live in the light of the love of God is to be turned away from our tendency toward self-focus and self-absorption.    To live in the light of the love of God is to see the truth that we are not the star of a show called “My Life.” To live in God’s love is to be humbled in the truest sense of the word.  At the same time, we are lifted up as our stories have been grafted into God’s grand saving story.  We’re not simply reading stories of people like Moses and Isaiah and Micah and Mary and Elizabeth – although people are involved!  They and we in Christ are caught up in the story of God, and it’s a never-ending one! 

This is a most freeing thing I must say.  We’re talking about being blessed, being in a good place, being secure.  It means that my security does not lie in having $5 million, Kevin O’Leary’s advice notwithstanding (and “Good luck with that,” I say to myself).  It means that having a good Christmas for me is not dependent on buying or receiving the perfect presents, preparing and/or eating the perfect Christmas dinner with the perfect people (and “Good luck with that!” we may be saying).

Not that there’s anything wrong with thoughtful gifts or, well-prepared meals, or delightful company!

We have this wonderful scene with Mary and Elizabeth. Mary enters the home, and as soon as Elizabeth hears her greeting, the child (little John the Baptist, remember) leaps in her womb!  Pre-natal babies are jumping for joy, and Elizabeth is exclaiming with a loud cry, and she lays down what it means to be in a good place/a good position/secure/blessed because God is with us: “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” (1:45)

The first beatitude in Luke’s Gospel.  Blessed are you who believes that God does what He says.

Do you believe this?  I believe this.  We sing a song here at Blythwood that contains this great line: “We will stand as children of the promise.”  Let that be our promise.  This is our part to play in the promise of Advent.  Our “Yes” to God.  The only qualification we need is a willing heart.  Someone has described Mary like this:

“Mary reflects the person whom God… chooses to use. She brings no outstanding credentials to the task and lives on the edge of the nation. She brings nothing on her résumé other than her availability and willingness to serve. But those characteristics are the most basic ones anyone can offer God. So he puts her to use in his plan, taking her through a process for which she has had no training or preparation. He simply promises to be with her in the journey, and she responds by being willing to go on the ride.”

Mary stands in a long line of people, from Abraham to Moses and on down the line, who responded to God’s call with a “Let’s go.  Let’s do this.  I know You are with me.  I know You are with us.”  You can picture Mary at the front of all those who came before her who said, “Here I am, send me.”  We can answer the same way this morning and pledge ourselves to God’s saving plan – turning or returning to God whether it’s for the first time or the 1001st time.  Knowing God-with-us in a whole new way this Christmas as we put ourselves in that same picture behind Mary and all those who, through the centuries, have said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.” (1:38)  Let us be those who carry your love to the world because you are with us.

Because God remembered us.  Because God noticed us.  Because God has made mercy known to us in.  Because Jesus died.  Because Jesus rose and ascended but did not leave us alone.  Because we look forward to Jesus’ return, standing together with our heads up, not losing heart, not letting go.  Because God is with us and calls us every day to bear God’s love – letters of Christ written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God on our hearts.

This is the God who loves us dear friends.  God with us.  May you all be so blessed this Christmas.  Merry Christmas everyone.

It's good to be able to sing together, isn’t it?  In Christ alone, we sing, my hope is found.  It’s good to be able to hear God speak to us from God’s Word.  “He himself is our peace,” talking about Jesus of course.  “Make me a person of peace,” we pray.  We sang this prayer last week.  Today we hear, “The Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.  With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” (Is 12:2b-3)  Isaiah 12 is a song.  Someone has called it “A Song to Sing on the Day of Salvation,” which, for the follower of Christ, is every day.  We have a song to sing.  It’s a joyful song.

There’s another song that goes like this, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.”  Perhaps before we go any further we should talk for a little while about what joy means in our faith; what salvation means.

The last thing I want to hear this morning is a message from someone saying, “You have to find your joy!”  I feel that I have quite enough to do already without you laying that on me.  Things are difficult for many people in many different ways.  Salvation in Jesus is my joy every day.  The joy of salvation in Jesus is not dependent on circumstances, which, as we know, can be dire.  My joy in Jesus does not mean that I should go about every day cheerful or wearing a plastic smile.  My joy in Jesus does not mean I turn away from suffering or am called to act like bad things didn’t happen or aren’t happening.  We rejoice with those who rejoice, and we mourn with those who mourn. My joy in the salvation of Jesus is not something I have to find.  I received it first when Jesus found me.  My joy in the salvation of Jesus is not something that anyone can ever take away from me, nor will it ever be taken away from me to the ages of ages world without end, amen!

This is our joy, children of God.  This is the joy of being in Christ.  Being saved in Christ.  Being delivered in Christ.  Being rescued in Christ.  My joy in Christ is being rescued from shame/guilt/my own worst tendencies/self-absorption/turning inward/misdirected passions/despair/turmoil (or whatever we want to call the opposite of peace)/meaningless existence/fill in the blank.

I have a song to sing, no matter my circumstances.  This is assuming, of course, that we are not ok with circumstances, that we are not ok with the status quo.  This is one of the reasons I love that we light our Advent Candles during the shortest days of the year.  I like that they burn defiantly in the midst of circumstances that can be quite dark, to say the least.  Lighting these candles is a signal that we reject the status quo, that we are not satisfied with business as usual, whether it’s in our world, our country, our city, or our hearts.  We’re not just singing Pollyannas in here, covering our ears and averting our eyes.  If we are tempted in that way, then we can be thankful for John the Baptist coming screeching into the parking lot and bursting through our doors with the hair and the clothes and saying something like, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

Let’s not be too hard on the crowds coming out to see John.  We have seen the crowds, and they are us.  They wanted to hear John’s sermon of repentance and forgiveness.  They recognized the need for something beyond themselves for rescue.  They didn’t react badly to John’s rather unorthodox preaching methods – insulting one’s congregation being generally frowned upon.  But what is really going on here?  Vipers were not known for being or doing anything good.  John is not so much insulting or questioning the crowd’s parentage but making the point that in and of themselves, they have nothing to contribute toward their own rescue/deliverance/salvation.  It’s all God.  It’s all Jesus.  John recognizes that there is a lot of bad fruit around and the status quo is not acceptable.  This is the bad news.  “Something has gone wrong,” as someone has written.  “Something has gone wrong, but a remedy exists.  Something has gone wrong, but you are not far from the kingdom… Here is where the joy resides, not in the denial of brokenness, but that brokenness is not the last word.  It is not the defining word.”  The message has been heard remember, “Do not be afraid; for see - I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” (Luke 2:10-11)

A Saviour.  A Redeemer.  A Rescuer.  This is who God is.  The good and fitting and proper response to our rescuing God.  Trust over fear.  Singing and shouting because “Immanuel.”  God is with us.

This was Isaiah’s message in Isaiah 12.  How could the prophet speak of thanks and trust and joy in the middle of the situation Judah found itself in?  The kingdom of Israel divided.  The people of Jerusalem and all of Judah under threat from an Israel-Syria alliance.  King Ahaz of Judah looking not to Yahweh for help but to his own ingenuity – his own ability to forge an alliance with the Assyrian empire for help.  Isaiah looks forward to a time when rescue will come.  In doing so, he also looks back.  “You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O LORD, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me.  Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.” (Isaiah 12:1-2)  This is our story.  This is our song.  God is a saving God. 

I came across an old gospel song that was new to me called “We’ve Come This Far By Faith.”  We’ve come this far by faith.  We’ve come this far by trust.  It goes, “We’ve come this far by faith/ Leaning on the Lord/ Trusting in His holy Word/ He’s never failed us yet/Oh oh oh can’t turn around/ We’ve come this far by faith.” We remember God’s saving acts in our own lives.  Isiah remembers the song that was sung when the children of Israel were delivered.  When a way was made through the sea, and Moses and the Israelites sang a song to the Lord – “The Lord is my strength and my might/song, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.” (Exodus 15:2), Isaiah looks back.  Our joy in the Lord looks back

Our joy in the Lord also looks ahead.  Isaiah looks forward to a time when the kingdom of David will be nothing but a stump – a time of desolation and dissolution.  Isaiah looks forward to a young woman with child, bearing a son and naming him “Immanuel.”  God with us.  The presence of God is our joy.  Isaiah looks forward to a time when the house of David is nothing but a stump, but a “shoot is going to come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.  The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding.” (Is 11:1-2)  With righteousness, he will judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.  Our righteous and faithful vine who will say, “Abide in me (remain in me/rest in me/live in me) as I abide in you.” (John 15:4a).  God with us.  Our joy.  “Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.” (Isaiah 12:6)

Our joy, rooted and founded and grounded in our saving, delivering God, looks back.  Our joy looks ahead.  One eye on the past.  One eye on what is to come.  Two feet planted firmly in the present.  “With joy, you will draw water from the well of salvation,” Isaiah proclaims. (v3)  Water is life.  Immanuel is life.  This is the thing about drawing water from a well.  It’s a daily act.  You go to the well to draw water from it.  The joy of my salvation/deliverance/rescue is not only based on a prayer that I prayed as a child as I went to bed or a prayer that I made at summer camp and told my camp counsellor about right afterward, or my following my Lord through the waters of baptism shortly after that.  Do not get me wrong.  Those are all significant events in my life and in my faith.  The joy of my salvation is also drawing water from the wells of salvation every day because I need those waters every day. I need to run to that well every day because He is my joy.

Which brings us back to the question with which we started.  What then should we do?  Every day.  This is an imminently practical question, and it’s a good one.  You may be saying, “Well, this is a great image and all very poetic, but what would that practically look like in my life and in our lives together?”  I’m glad you asked!

Isaiah gives an answer in v4.  “Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted.”  The call is to turn to him each day.  To call on his name.  To thank him in the ways we do that as individuals and in groups of two or more remembering that he is with us.  To make his deeds known.  Remember the line that Paul wrote to the churches of Ephesus about living for the praise of his glory; in other words, to make who God is known in our words and in our deeds.

Or to put it in other terms, to bear fruit worthy of repentance.  John the Baptist was a serious man.  We want to be people who take our joy seriously.  I want to be serious about my joy!  The presence of God with us calls us to be present to one another.  “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, Rejoice.” Phil 4:4 We heard this in our reading from Philippians this morning.  This rejoicing is meant to look like something.  It’s not just so we can get together and shout and sing.  That’s good and right, too.  This is not an either/or proposition.  “Let your gentleness be known to everyone, the Lord is near.” Phil 4:5  Living in the joy of the good news of salvation in Christ looks like something.

What then should we do?  Take this seriously, says John.  John gets most specific here.  This is good.  John doesn’t just say, “Go make the world a better place,” or “Go share the gospel,” or “Go work for justice.”    John brings our joy into the everyday.  “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” (Luke 3:11)  I have to say I have a lot more than two coats.  How many do I need?  John is calling for a radical reorienting of our lives that puts into question anything we have, clothing or food-wise that’s over and above what we need.

1. What kind of people might God make us?  Tax collectors.  Don’t cheat.  Don’t look to get as much as you can for yourself.  Soldiers.  Don’t use your power and authority for your own gain.  Don’t seek to improve your own lifestyle based on the suffering and exploitation of others.  Things are bad in many places and ways.  If we’re doing ok, make sure we’re paying attention to those around us who are not.  Start by giving stuff away and sharing.  Small steps.  Doable.  World-changing?  Why not?  God is present with us.  Let us ask God to help us be present to others.  Let us ask God to help us.  Let it start with those closest to us and spread out from there.  We have a chance here at Blythwood this Christmas to share what we have internationally through the Shared Gifts of Hope campaign.    

In the good news that comes to us of Jesus, our Emmanuel (our God with us), we have a new way of being and a new way of doing every day.  May we each daily draw deep from the wells of salvation this Advent and always.   Amen

Enough build-up.  Here’s the question.  The question is asked at the birth of Jesus’ cousin John (the Baptist).  We read the story of John’s birth in Luke 1.  His parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah.  A story in a long line of stories in which God brings life. Aren’t such stories happening today?

When John is born, everyone assumes he will be called Zechariah after his father.  Elizabeth says no, he is to be called John (which means “YHWH has been gracious”).  Zechariah affirms this, and he begins to speak (he couldn’t speak for a while) and praise God.  People throughout the Judean hill country get to talking about what had happened (because this is what people are like,) and then this: “All who heard them pondered them and said, “What then will this child become?” (Luke 1:66)

That was a long setup to get to the question, but I want us to grasp that question for ourselves and hold on to it every day.  What might I become?  What might God do in my life?  What kind of person might God make me?  What kind of man do I want to be or become?  Not based in my own striving or trying but because YHWH has been gracious, and I am living in the grace of God.  I am living in the grace of Christ, who is our peace.

The question is for all of us.  What will this man/woman/child become?  The question is for all stages of life – from the youngest among us to the oldest – because to be in Christ means we never come to the end of being refined or cleansed.  We are able to hear the stories and the call of the prophet Malachi and the call of John the Baptist newly because God is making us new!

Assuming that we want to be made new, of course.  I’m not one to make assumptions, and I know that being made new may not be something we want.  Status quo is fine!  I like the way I am (to which I might say, “Yeah, but how do those around you feel??”). We had our final revitalization meeting with Cid Latty from CBOQ this past week – the end of a three-year revitalization journey that I know will continue to bear fruit in days to come.  Cid wisely reminded us that revitalization or renewal or new life in a church is not based on renovation or a new sign or a new hire or new people (though there is nothing wrong with any of those things).  Revitalization or renewal must begin with each and every one of us – God making us new or giving us new life!  This sermon is called “Passion,” and may God give each and every one of us a passion for new life.  A passion for peace.  I’m not talking about passion simply as emotion runs wild without purpose or direction (or misdirected).  We’re talking of hearts that are directed or turned each and every day toward God, whose grace and mercy and justice and peace shape and direct our passion.  As the old Christmas ad said, “I want that!”

John the Baptist wanted that.  John the Baptist was a serious man.  Someone has said that every holiday event needs a John the Baptist.  Every church needs a John the Baptist or several John the Baptists – “someone who doesn’t hold back, someone who says what he thinks, someone who believes with every fibre of his being, someone who is so vitally present that everyone else is just drawn to them.”  Sure his style of dress was unusual and his diet unorthodox, though Luke doesn’t get into those details about John.  Truths of God may come to us from unexpected people.  We remember the words that John’s father spoke of the Lord, whose way John would prepare.  “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in the shadow of darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79)  John had only one good sermon and that’s ok.  John’s sermon was repentance and forgiveness.  In another words, John’s sermon was the good news of Christ Jesus, and that’s the one good sermon any pastor should have.

He is our peace.  He himself is our peace, who made a way over the chasm that separated us from God.  He himself is our peace, who tears down dividing walls of hostility that would separate us one from another.  The Candle of Peace continues to burn brightly, defiantly. What then will this man become? (pointing to self)  What then will this little girl or boy become?  What then will this woman become?  What then will you become?  To put the question another way, “In what or in whom is your peace?”

This is an important question.  We know what’s going on in the world.  The Word of Life comes at a particular time.  “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…” (Luke 3:1-2a)  Luke is talking about the seats of political power, economic power, religious power.  Political rulers known for peace under the heel of the Roman boot and nest feathering.  Religious rulers known for corruption and exploitation of the poor.  Rulers for whom Jesus would weep when he weeps over Jerusalem as he approaches the city and says, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!” (Luke 19:42)

In what or in whom is our peace?  The word of the Lord doesn’t come to the “centres of power.”  Do we look to political leaders or political movements or political parties for peace?  Do we believe promises of “peace in our time”?  If so, I would ask, “Peace for whom and at what cost?”  Do we look to economic leaders for peace and prosperity?  Do we look to religious leaders?  Thank God that God’s Word comes to us at a specific time and at a specific place.  “In the soon to be 5^th year of President Trump, at the time of Prime Minister Trudeau, when Putin ruled the Russian Federation and Xi Jinping led the People’s Republic of China when Tiff Macklem was Governor of the Bank of Canada”

The word of the Lord came to the people of Blythwood Road Baptist Church.  He is our peace.

The word of the Lord came to John the Baptist in the wilderness.  The wilderness is a place of transformation.  The wilderness is a place where people are made ready.  The way of peace has been made, is being made, and will be made.  The promise is that the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places made smooth.  This promise is for our hearts.  The crooked in our hearts being made straight.  The rough ways in our hearts being made smooth.  God making us people of Advent.  People of peace.  We know about wars and rumours of wars.  We also hear stories of assault charges at Santa Claus parades and fights in mall parking lots over parking spaces.  We know the need in our workplaces and schools for the peace of Christ. We also know the need in our homes for the peace of Christ. We know the need in our hearts for the peace of Christ.

May this be the longing of our hearts, people of God, people of Advent.  People of hope and peace.  “Lord, make me a person of your peace.”  The Word is for each and every one of us.  Renewal starts with each and every one of us.  “Peace on Earth” is not simply a wish or unimagined dream or wish or a cheesy beauty pageant answer to “If you had one wish, what would you wish for?”  Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.  Truly Lord.

Do we long for renewal?  Last week, we talked about the promises of God and asked which promises.  Listen to the word of the Lord that Malachi brings to a post-exile people at a time when renewal is needed, and peace is needed in the middle of corruption and exploitation.  Really though, isn’t renewal always needed?  Hear the promise once again:

“For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi (1 Peter 1:9) and refine them like gold and silver until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness.” (Malachi 3:2-3)  We have two images here for what God does in us.  Fullers were launderers.  They would take laundry outside the city (because of the strong smell of the soap, which was alkaline and odorous) to cleanse and whiten garments.  Refiner’s fire we get from metalwork.  We are reminded of John’s words, “I baptize you with water… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Luke 3:16). This is the promise.

Before this, there is a rhetorical question that seems rather ominous.  “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” (Malachi 3:2a)  I’ve become more familiar than I was with Handel’s “Messiah” and would like to become more familiar still.  We hear these words from Malachi in Part 1, Sections 5 and 6.  It’s a bass part singing, “Thus saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts: Yet once, a little while and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land” (from Haggai).  Then, “But who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth?  For he is like a refiner’s fire.”  One version I heard was a bass and then a contralto singer.  Powerful!  (play this on YouTube in service)

1. Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?

Dear people of God, dear people who are in Christ.  We can.  We can endure, and we can stand up and lift our heads.  Do you know why?  Emmanuel.  God is with us.  The one who calls us; the one who changes us; the one who brings the soap and the fire is with us.  God is with us.  Because here’s the thing about ancient fillers, and here’s the thing about silversmiths.  You don’t leave what you’re washing or refining unattended.  It’s not like throwing your laundry in the machine and walking away.  You are with it, stepping on it and cleansing it.  The refiner of silver needs to watch over the refining process.  Silversmiths were known for carrying the scars that came as a result of impurities being spit out from the smelter.  Our Silversmith still bears the scars that resulted in our forgiveness and our being given new life in him.

How might we know that we’re being refined?  This is the other thing about silver.  When it’s finished, the silversmith can see their face in it.  It’s not that we’re finished so much, but we’ll know we are being refined when the ways of God are being made known in our lives; when the ways of peace are being made known in our lives.

I wonder what this man will become.  I invite you to ask the same question of yourself this day, knowing that we are in the hands of the master fuller, the master silversmith.  The one who is our peace.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.

Amen

Let us start with these words from the Lord from the prophet Jeremiah, this 1^st Sunday of Advent.  Let the redeemed of the Lord hear this good news.  “The days are surely coming!”

The days are surely coming.  Now, we may hear those words and think, “Well, yes, that’s the problem!”  Christmas is coming and I can’t believe it’s already the 1^st Sunday of Advent (along with the 1^st Sunday of December).  There is so much to prepare.  There is so much I’m in the middle of as I close out the year.  Day to day life is hard enough with figuring out what to eat and trying to stay on top of emails and messages and the kids’ activities and work obligations and family obligations and now Christmas parties and extra events.

Or maybe it’s the opposite for us.  Maybe Christmas doesn’t look like what it used to look like.  Maybe the season fills us with nostalgia – the painful kind.  Maybe we’re saying Christmas isn’t like it used to be.  Maybe, like Charlie Brown, instead of feeling happy, we just feel let down.

No matter where we are this 1^st Sunday of Advent, let us hear good news today.  “The days are surely coming,” says the Lord, “when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”  We are reminded in this promise, that to be the people of God is to be a people who wait.  The question that is always before us is this – “How do we wait well?”  This of course leads to another more primary question – “What are we waiting for?”

When I was a child and someone was taking their time to do something, we used to say, “What are you waiting for?  Christmas?”  What are we waiting for?  How do we wait well? It’s important to be asking the right questions.  The passage we read from Luke 21 comes from the last time Jesus teaches publicly before he is put to death.  Jesus and his followers and his audience are in the temple in Jerusalem.  Some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God.  Jesus then says, “As for these things that you see, the days will come  when not one stone will be left upon another: all will be thrown down.”  He is speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem which will come in AD 70.  Roman forces will surround it and lay siege for 4 months.  The city will be destroyed.  Anywhere from 600,000 to 1,000,000 people will be killed.  One hundred thousand will be enslaved.  Jesus’ prophecy leads to another question, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?”

“When?” is a big question when we’re waiting.  How long are we going to be waiting?  It’s become a little more difficult for us to not know how long.  The wait for a table is around 15 minutes.  Reasonable!  Your estimated hold time is 1 hour 40 minutes.  I don’t think so (unless it’s really urgent).  Who has 1 hour 40 minutes?  We have things to do!  Jesus doesn’t address “When?”  He says “Beware that you are not led astray ; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’  Do not go after them.”  Alright.  Jesus goes on to speak not only of the destruction of Jerusalem, but of the end of the world as we know it. This speaks of course to the question of “What are we waiting for?”  It’s probably not news to you (though if it is you’re going to find out it’s very good news indeed).  Jesus goes on to speak not only of Jerusalem’s coming destruction at the hands of the imperial might of the Roman Empire, but of the renewal of all things; the gathering together of all things in Christ; the new heaven and the new earth;  as he puts it, “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”

So take heart.  Do not lose heart.  Remember who we are.  Remember whose we are.  In Christ I am a post-Easter person.  In Christ I am a resurrection person.  In Christ I am an Advent person.  In Christ, we are Advent people.  I have to say something in me likes to see all the Advent calendars at the supermarket checkout.  It’s a reminder not only of what this season is about, but what we are about as followers of Jesus.  Let us live it out and speak it out when the opportunities are put in front of us!  The word “Advent” comes from a Latin word which means “arrival” whose component parts mean… quite simply yet so profoundly.  To come.  To be Advent people means that we have been given a whole new way to see in the light of Christ, who has come, who comes, and who will, one day, come. 

A new ordering of everything!  Relationships.  Responsibilities.  Money.  Things.  Time.  This is the 1^st Sunday of Advent.  Not the 1^st Sunday in Advent, like Advent is something that we step into for a while and then leave.  In Christ it’s not about getting into the spirit of Christmas or getting into the spirit of Advent, it’s about being of Advent!  It’s who we are.  As someone has said, “We are people who live in anticipation, who live in hope.  It is the essence of our being.”

We are people who look back.  People who remember and remind one another.  I like this definition of hope for those who are in Christ – “confident expectation.”  Part of this confident expectation is surely based on how we have seen God making promises and carrying them out.  We can consider this in our personal lives.  It is good to consider the question together, “Which of God’s promises is most meaningful to you right now, and how have you know God’s promises to have been kept in your own life?”  Promises like “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you.  I do not give as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27)  Promises like “And remember I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20) How about “Do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God, I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.” (Is 41:11)  Often the light of hope – the light of confident expectation – burns most brightly when things are dim.  There’s a hymn called “Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus.”  The first verse goes like this:

 'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus/Just to take Him at His Word/Just to rest upon His promise/

Just to know, 'Thus saith the Lord'  This last line is the King James way of saying “This is what the Lord says”  and it’s all over the OT.  When Jeremiah brought the word of the Lord in chapter 33, it was a dark time.  Jerusalem was under siege and would soon be destroyed; its people killed or carried away in captivity; the temple destroyed.  In the midst of this darkness the promise shines: Jer 33:14-16:

¹⁴ The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ¹⁵ In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. ¹⁶ In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’

Our righteousness.  Our justice.  The righteous Branch.  The shoot from the stump of Jesse (David’s dad).  The righteous Branch is speaking in Luke 21 and he is looking ahead.  We who live in the hope of Christ also look ahead.  Jesus speaks of wars and insurrections and nation rising against nation and kingdom rising against kingdom and great earthquakes and famine  and plagues and signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves and people fainting from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world and I put the question to all of us “How are we not overwhelmed?”

If we’re paying the smallest bit of attention, we know what is going on in the world.  Wars and rumours of wars.  “World War 3 Had Begun” says Ukranian Ex-Military Commander.  Political uncertainty on every level it seems.  Economic uncertainty.  “25% Tariffs Coming!”  How is it not all too much?  Uncertainty in our own lives and in the lives of those we love when it comes to health and well-being and flourishing and why am I even talking about flourishing or thriving when it seems that for so many we’re just barely surviving? Here's the thing. The candle of hope is still burning.  The day is surely coming.  In the middle of uncertainly.  In the middle of injustice.  In the middle of hate and greed and fear and division and fear and foreboding.  The day is surely coming.  “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.”  In Christ, we are Advent people who live in confident expectation of a weight of glory that is beyond measure.  We who are bowed down let us listen to Jesus words, and stand up and raise our heads, because redemption/renewal/rescue is drawing near!

In Jesus our hope looks back.  Our hope looks ahead.  Our hope also looks around.  Look, be on guard, be alert, says Jesus.  Not another task, so much.  This is a good thing I think.  For many of us it may be that overwhelmedness hits us in terms of tasks.  It’s not another task that we’re being given, though it will take time.  Let us take the time to live as people of Advent.  If we’re already doing that, let us continue.  If we’re not, let us start.  Or perhaps I should say let us stop, look, be on guard, and be alert. 

1. Literally, Jesus tells us to look at the fig tree and all the trees.  We know all about trees here in Toronto and I hope where you may be too.  It’s spring time in Jerusalem here in Luke 21.  “Look at the fig tree and all the trees, as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.  So also when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.”  Look at the trees and how they remind us that something new (all things new) is coming.  I know that the trees are mostly bare now and winter is not far off.  Here’s the thing though – even in winter trees hold the promise and the reminder of something new.  Consider the maple (and all the deciduous trees).  In the winter months you see winter buds and know that spring is coming with all its promise of new life.  Let us be attentive to signs of new life happening all around us.  Example example.

Let us be who we are.  Advent people.  Let us be on guard.  Let us be alert.  “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life…”  Now you may be saying at this point “Hey I’m an old school Baptist!  I don’t even drink!”  On the other hand you may not.  Dissipation is not a word we hear a lot.  It literally means scatter as in “Oh look! The clouds have dissipated!”  Jesus is talking about the things that would cause us to be scattered.  Someone has described dissipation as being “uncentred” as in the things that would uncentre our souls from God.  The things with which we seek to numb ourselves, whether it’s something we drink or ingest or in inject or watch (endless reels) or play (endless video games).  You get the idea.  Let us not be so weighed down by the worries of this life that all we seek is to numb ourselves.  Let us not waste the gift of the time God gives us.  Remember those Jerusalemites who would get up early in the morning to listen to Jesus in the temple.  We want to be people who wait well.  People who listen.  We’re encouraging you to follow an Advent reader during these four weeks.  Follow it.  Stop.  Read. And finally, pray. 

This is who we are.  This is our hope.  This is how we wait.  The days are surely coming, says the Lord.  We’re going to close with a poem based on the words of the prophet Jeremiah from the Rev. Dr. Valerie Bridgman out of the Methodist Theological School in Delaware Ohio.  Hear the good news:

The Day Is Surely Coming

A day, certain and on its way And we feel it approaching Slowly first, then in a quickened pace Like a promise, on its way To being fulfilled A day when justice and righteousness Is executed as surely as the day breaks, Sun shines, rain falls, fog gathers At foothills 

A day is surely coming Sure as breath A day of safety A name of a Holy One on the lips; Branch Righteous One Hope Certainly on its way

Thanks be to God for our glorious hope! 

There is much talk in our culture about culture wars.  They’re not new.  The term was first used to describe the political conflict between the Roman Catholic church and the Kingdom of Prussia in the 1870s.  I don’t engage in culture wars and I’m humble enough to say I may be wrong in this.  I’m in no way here to impose a personal view on them.  I will say that they separate people based on ideology.  They divide people into camps which tends to lead to feelings of superiority and often hostility.  The demonization of opponents, and so on.  They’re the personification of evil and so on.  When Paul describes the armour of God here to close Ephesians 6, he is not talking about culture wars or any other kind of war against people.  In Christ, our enemy is not people.  Our enemy is the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers of this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.  We’ve heard about them before in Paul’s letter.  We come back to them today.  They’re powerful but not all-powerful.  They’re invisible but not invincible.  They’re real, and the struggle is real.  We are called to stand together, brothers and sisters in Christ.  Today, we hear Paul’s call to the church – Stand strong in the Lord, sisters and brothers.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we long to hear a word from Him today.  Let’s pray.

Remember when we started all this 7 weeks ago?  We talked about Paul raising the curtain, telling it like it is – no matter how dire, discomforting, discomfiting, dismal things may seem.  We talked about all those P’s!  Praise.  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who had blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.  Destined for adoption as children of God from time immemorial.  Purpose.  God’s purpose is to gather up all things in Christ at the end of time.  God’s great restoration project.  The renewal of all things.  Our purpose in Christ – to live for the praise of his glory.  Our purpose as the church is to stand as an outpost against the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places – to whom we return today.  Those forces working to thwart God’s purposes.  We stand like an outpost in enemy territory, and we stand together.  Remember the power of which Paul wrote.  The power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him at the right hand of God the Father, all mighty from whence he will return.  That power in you, in me, in us.  The power that has broken down walls of hostility.  Remember prayer.  I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ may give you a spirit of wisdom and understanding as you come to know him.  I pray that you may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fulness of God. We’re not messing around!  We want to take this more seriously than we take anyone or anything in this world. 

Reviewing these P’s I thought we could add a couple.  Praise.  Privilege. Predestined.  Purpose.  Plan (God’s).  Power.  Prayer.  I should do more of these alliterative lists.  Today we have another P.  Panoply.  All the arms/armour.  Panhoplia.  Putting it on.  It’s a gift, just like those new clothes we talked about.  Taking up the whole armour of God so that we can stand and withstand.  Stand against.  We’ve talked about walking worthily.  We’ve talked about wearing those new clothes well.  Today we’re talking about standing.

We stand together, of course.  I was given this figure as a gift from our friends at Southeast Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, TN when I was installed/inducted as Senior Pastor here.  It brings them to mind.  Pastor Joe and his wife Lori and everyone who came through our doors.  In my imagination, I see a bunch of these lined up. Like a hundred. 

Stand and withstand together against the wiles of the devil.  We believe in the devil.  We believe in the cosmic powers of this present darkness.  Some would say that we’re beyond such things in the post-Enlightenment materialist West.  Nice to have that privilege, I guess.  At the same time we’re not to pay undue attention to these cosmic powers.  We needn’t spend more time praying against them than we do to God, for example, look on things like our car not starting as a demonic attack.  It may be that I just need a new battery.  C.S. Lewis has a great line about this in The Screwtape Letters – “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”  There’s a line to be walked here as we stand together. 

It’s significant too that, apart from closing with these words, Paul puts them right after his description of what being in Christ looks like in our households.  Husbands/wives.  Parents/children.  Slaves/masters employees/employers remember.  Where the ways of God are being made known and shown, there is nothing the devil would like more than to ruin things, whether in our homes or in our churches.  There is nothing more the devil would like than to have us turn against one another.  We may read a line like the wiles of the devil or the spiritual forces of evil and think of things like persecution.  Many of us may know that it’s often in our homes that our greatest spiritual failures and hypocrisies happen.  How often do we fail, and our failures happen close to home?    Up close and personal.

Up close and personal is how wars were fought in Paul’s day.  We get this even today.  We can watch Gladiator and Gladiator 2.  I will bring in another analogy that I hope will help.  Paul is speaking here of being prepared for battle.  Being ready.  Think of a hockey game.  Think of the training and diet, and practice that goes into being able to step out onto the ice.  Think of the equipment that is indispensable.  Imagine the start of a Leafs game.  The other team has taken the ice, doing their warm up laps (say it’s Boston).  The announcer’s voice booms out, “Ladies and gentlemen, your Toronto Maple Leafs!”  The first Leaf steps out onto the ice dressed in a tracksuit and running shoes.  No skates.  No protective equipment.  No stick.  You can imagine how things would go. We’re being called to stand.  We’re not being called to triumph over these evil forces because the battle’s already been won.  At the same time, the battle rages.  The already/not yet of the Kingdom of God is the already/not yet of Christ’s victory.  The outcome is known and we wait for it.  We are tasked with standing in a victory that Christ has won.  Thanks be to God that we are given equipment which enables us to stand.  Let us put it on, take it up.  Stand up.  Stand firm.

Starting with fastening the belt of truth around our waists.  More than simply for holding trousers up, ancient belts were used to tuck in loose-flowing garments when it was time for action or travel.  The Roman soldier’s belt acted as protection and support to help one stand, much like the leather belt that people who lift heavy weights use.  Standing in Christ is standing in the Truth.  Remember who you are.  Remember whose you are.  Remember the God to whom we belong.  Standing together and speaking the truth in love.  As someone has said: “The truth of the gospel reflected in lives of love-infused honesty.” 

Putting on the breastplate of righteousness.  Of justice.  Of right relation with God and, by extension, humanity and all of creation.  We find here that in taking up this metaphorical armour, God is giving us his own metaphorical armour. Isaiah 59:15b-17a

 “The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. ^{He saw that there was no one and was appalled that there was no one to intervene, so his own arm brought him victory, and his righteousness upheld him.} He put on righteousness like a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head;”  Being brought into a right relationship with God that we may do the good works that God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.  This is our uniform!

“As shoes for your feet, put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.”  We’re standing in Christ.  He is our peace.  Remember those words that we’re going to hear again in a few weeks from the angel choir – “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those whom he favours.”  Remember those words from John the Baptist’s dad Zechariah – “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us; to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”  Take it back farther to Isaiah – “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger who brings good news, who announces salvation (the helmet), who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’” (Is 52:7)  Do peace.  Speak peace.  Do the good news.  Speak the good news.  Don’t speak the good news and be the bad news (which brings us back to righteousness, and you see how these work together).  With the gospel of peace on your feet, always be ready to give an account of the hope that is ours in Christ.

Stand firm.  Stand fast.  Stand with one another so we can withstand the attacks of the cosmic powers of this present darkness.  Take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.  The flaming arrows of the accuser, the slanderer.  The lies.  You’re not good enough for God to use!  You’re good enough on your own!  You don’t need God!  Take the shield of faith – not simply intellectual assent but an ever-deepening trust.  The shield of faith that says, “Your grace is sufficient for me, Lord.”  The shield of faith that says, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38-39)

Here's the other thing about the shield of faith. The Romans used a tactic known as the tortoise (testudo) in battle where they would move with their shields together.  We are not called to do any of this on our own but to encourage and remind one another of truth, the one who is our righteousness and who he enables us to be, our peace, our trust, our salvation.  Take the helmet of salvation.  Living confidently in the truth that we serve a saving, delivering, rescuing God.  Living confidently in the truth that our stories have been grafted into God’s grand saving plan in which, at the renewal of all things, all things will be gathered up in Christ.  Living confidently, knowing that there is an eternal weight of glory coming that is beyond measure.  Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.  Listening to God’s word and for God’s word to strengthen and guide and encourage.  Remembering Jesus’ own reliance on God’s word in his own temptation – One does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  Do not put the Lord your God to the test.  Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.

1. Pray.

These are among Paul’s closing words.  We said from the beginning that what Paul wants for his readers is to come to an ever-deeper understanding of what it means to be in Christ.  We are in a battle and the battle is a spiritual one.  How could we not turn meaningfully and often and always in prayer to the one in whom is our privilege, purpose, plan, and power?  “Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.  To that end, keep alert and always persevere in supplications for all the saints.” (6:18)  Someone has described what Paul is talking about here as “the adoption of prayer as a lifestyle of alertness… an attitude of constant dependence upon God” which is of critical importance.  Battles can create in us an overriding sense of self-preservation.  Paul reminds us that in Christ, we share a common uniform and a common cause.   Our concern for one another must be expressed in prayer for one another.

Paul’s last request is that they pray for him too.  “Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains.  Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.” (19-20)  Paul has been declaring it boldly, and it’s been a blessing to sit with his words over the last seven weeks.  As we go from here to stand together, let it be with Paul’s benediction echoing in our hearts – “Peace be to the whole community, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Grace be with you all who have an undying love for our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Our lives – our life together – characterized by the peace, love and grace of God, and immersed in God’s eternity.  Thanks be to God for his word!

Perhaps the reason these verses illicit such reactions is that they speak to how our closest relationships are lived out.  We’re in the second half of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, and Paul is talking pointedly about what being “in Christ” means.  Here Paul is talking about what being in Christ means in the family unit – a building block of Roman society and arguably any society.  Husbands and wives.  Parents and children.  Masters and slaves, who were part of the family unit in Paul’s day.  We might think of the latter in terms of employees/employers.  We’re all familiar with such relationships and live in them for bad or good. 

At the heart of Paul’s message here is this question – “As people who are in Christ, what are our responsibilities to one another?”  Let us ask for God’s help as we look at God’s word for us this morning.

All of the instruction that Paul gives in the latter half of his letter is rooted and grounded in the truths of which Paul has reminded us in the first half of his letter.  You have been adopted into the family of God according to the good pleasure of his will; sealed with the Holy Spirit; called to live for the praise of his glory; brought from death to life; made one as the church in Christ, unified though not uniform; gifted differently by God that we may all be equipped to live for the praise of God’s glory. Remember the good news of which we were reminded last week: Christ has forgiven you.  Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.

1. Then.  Be careful how you live, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.  Do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.  Paul follows this with a call to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Holy Spirit as you…

Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves

Singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts

Giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ

Being subject to one another, or placing yourselves under one another, out of reverence for Christ.  This is for all who are in Christ, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.  Who told his followers “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.  It will not be so among you, but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many”

So let us begin there.  Subjection.  Submitting.  Willfully and voluntarily yielding in love, not because one is forced.  Leadership. None of these things are about domineering, passivity, insisting on having one’s own way.  Paul is addressing people in the church here who did not hold status in the wider society.  It would have been amazing to women, children and slaves that he was addressing them at all.  You all have worth.  You all have value.  You all have agency.  None of this is about inequality.  Inequality was the view of the wider society. This is what Aristotle had to say regarding women: “It is part of the household science to rule over wife and children . . . for the male is by nature better fitted to command than the female.”  This is Josephus on women: “The woman, says the Law, is in all things inferior to the man. Let her accordingly be submissive, not for her humiliation, but that she may be directed; for the authority has been given by God to the man.” 

None of this is about inequality, being domineering or subjugation.  It will not be so among you!  Is Paul a chauvinist?  When Paul talked about authority in marriage he said, “For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does.” He goes on!  “Likewise the husband does not authority over his own body, but the wife does.”  (1 Cor 7:4) It will not be so among you!  “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you, are one in Christ Jesus.”  The markers by which we are divided; the markers with which we would place ourselves in hierarchical levels of importance; they are erased in Christ.

So Paul talks to wives and he talks to husbands.  Wives be subject to your husbands as you are subject to the Lord.  Not because you’re forced to.  There is much discussion and much disagreement about the meaning of “head” here in v 23.  Does it mean leader?  Does it mean source?  Is it somewhere in between?  If “leader”, is Paul naming the husband as leader for all time/circumstances/cultures?  I believe faithful saints can disagree here.  What do I think?  I think leadership is fluid.  In our own marriage, Nicole or I will take leadership in different aspects of our lives.  We may consider leadership in terms of “Who gets the final say?”  I would say that when it comes to a matter in which a final say is needed, we should remember that we are surrounded by married saints to whom we can go for prayerful advice and counsel.  Preparing for today I read a story of a young pastor and his wife whose wedding gift cash total was $3,000.  This was in 1984.  The husband wanted to spend it on a home computer.  The wife wanted to backpack through Europe for two months, as a honeymoon.  Both solid ideas.  The husband tells of taking a walk and hearing “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for her.”  He went home and told his wife that he thought they should go to Europe.  She told him “We can look for ways to save up for a computer.”  The trip was so long in planning that they ended up getting the computer before they went! 

This is the other side of the coin of subjection or submitting.  Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.  Self-sacrificing love that seeks nothing but the good of the other.  This holds true no matter how we interpret this passage.  I want us to pay attention to the analogy that Paul is making between a husband and wife, and Christ and his church.  They are one body.  “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” as Adam put it.  Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.  “No one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church because we are members of his body.  For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”  Not subsumed, any more than we are subsumed as individuals in the church.  Remember unified, not uniform.  We’re not talking about a loss of identity or personhood or selfhood.  One writer described married life rather beautifully in this way: “Each personality is enlarged by the inclusion of the other, ideally effecting the perfect blending of two separate lives into one. Continuity with the old personality is not broken, but the radical transformation resulting from the intimate personal encounter creates a new self.”  This is a great mystery, says Paul, and I am applying it to Christ and the church.  We are all of us made one in Christ.  Live in love, as Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us.  Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. All of us.  Be imitators of God, as beloved children.

Speaking of children, Paul is talking to them too!  They’re part of this family too.  “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.”  Listen to your parents' kids.  Honour them.  This looks different as we go through life, of course.  Honour your parents.  Be in touch.  What does it mean to honour our elder parents?  So that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.  Not a guarantee of long life, because there are no such guarantees.  Wisdom, rather, concerning how to live well, or live in love.  Fathers (and mothers too), do not provoke your children to anger.  Do not exasperate your children as this can be translated.  Think of all the ways parents can exasperate their children.  Someone has listed them: • unreasonable demands for perfection • constant nagging over minor infractions • not leaving room for freedom of expression and personal growth • lack of encouragement and affirmation • harsh, unloving rebukes or cruelty • public embarrassment • verbal or physical abuse • inconsistent discipline • showing favouritism for one child over another • unfair or extreme discipline that doesn’t match the offence • overprotective hovering that stifles growth.  Bring them up rather, in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.  As we know from infant dedications, this is the job of all of us in the church.

Paul is reflecting the social standing of the people to whom he’s writing.  At the same time, in Christ, he’s rejecting it.  Why doesn’t Paul condemn slavery outright?  We must begin to answer this question with the following truth. In God’s story, in the conflict between oppressors and oppressed, God is always on the side of the oppressed.  Paul is not a 19th-century abolitionist (though had he lived in the 19^th century I’m sure he would have been).  Slavery in Roman times was different from North American chattel slavery with which we are familiar.  It was not based on race.  Slaves were often treated as members of the household (hence their inclusion here in the Christian household).  They could be released from slavery.  This is not to excuse it.  Any system that is dehumanizing is reprehensible.  Paul is not speaking against slavery as part of the Roman economic system, but he’s certainly sowing the seeds for its demise.  In the social strata in which slaves lived, it would have been amazing that Paul was addressing them at all.  You’re in this too.  You have a seat at God’s table too.  How to be faithful to Christ in the system in which you live?  Subvert it.  Remember to whom you truly belong.  “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.  Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women, knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free.”

Masters, so the same to them.  Render service with enthusiasm?  Why not??  Things are upside down in the kingdom of God.  It was common practice to incentivize slaves with threats of beatings, being sold, death even.  It will not be so among you!  Stop threatening them, for you know that both of you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality. 

In Christ, there is no slave or free.  God is always on the side of the oppressed, and one day when all is gathered up in Christ, all oppression shall cease.  In what ways might the church be called to speak against and act against systems that dehumanize? 

To be in Christ together is for all of life.  We’ve talked about how work may be done for the praise of God’s glory.  To make God’s ways known.  This is for front-line staff, supervisors, managers, CEO’s.  Here’s a paraphrase of Paul’s words:

Employees, obey your earthly bosses with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favour when their eye is on you but as employees of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Work wholeheartedly, as if you were working for the Lord, not people because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are employees or bosses. Bosses, treat your employees in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Boss and yours is in heaven, and there is no favouritism with him.

Dear saints.  Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.  We are one in Christ.  Christ is in us.  May this be true be evident in our households. May God enable us to live in love, in every aspect of our lives.  May this be true for all of us.

I pray therefore that you may not lose heart.  We know what kind of things discourage us as followers of Christ.  I don’t have to list them.  How can we say that we’re not going to lose heart?  Paul has good things for us here this morning, let’s ask for God’s help as we hear them.

If you’ve heard me in a non-sermon setting for any length of time, you may know that I like digressions.  Usually, I’ll say something like “I’m all over the place here!”  Digressions within digressions.  Usually, I come back to where I started.  I don’t feel too badly about this, as we see in Ephesians 3 that Paul liked a good digression.  “This is the reason” is how Paul starts v1.  He goes off on a digression from vv 2-13.  This digression is all about purpose.  Paul then returns to his original thought in v 14 (“For this reason”) and writes of his prayer.

We heard Paul mention purpose and prayer in his introduction, and he comes back to these matters in chapter 3.  Before we begin with purpose, let us remember what we heard last week.  Paul wrote of the riches of God’s mercy and God’s great love for us, by which we have been brought from death to life in Christ.  This is God’s grace, God’s unmerited favour.  We didn’t look at the second half of chapter 2.  In it, Paul writes of how in the 1^st century church, the dividing wall between Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus had been broken down.  Chapter 2 ends with this description of the church – “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” Eph 2:19-22)

This is who the church is in Christ Jesus.  You may know I like to say that the church is not simply a collection of people with similar interests.  We’re not even simply a collection of people who believe the same thing or things.    The church is the body of Christ.  Remember those words we’ve heard – “You have the power that raised Jesus from the dead and seated him at God’s right hand in the heavenly places in you!”  Remember “In Christ you have been brought from death to life.”  Add this from Chapter 2- “He is our peace.”  Consider the polarization of our world today.  Consider the categories that divide people and set people against one another.  Here’s the truth for the church in the midst of rampant polarization.  Christ Jesus is our pole.  Christ Jesus is the still point of the turning world.  Christ in me.  Christ in you, the hope of glory.  We in Christ.  The church needs to be the place where differences that would divide around ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, immigration status, are erased in Christ. 

There is a divine plan in place, and we have a role to play in the divine plan.  The divine endgame is the gathering up of all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.  The renewal of all things.  Renewal.  Restoration.  The new heaven and the new earth.  The end of brokenness, injustice, mourning, crying, pain.  Paul has largely been talking about us as people who receive God’s grace in the opening part of his letter.  Now he speaks of the church as active participants in God’s plan.

Paul starts by talking about his own role in God’s plan.  A commission was given to Paul, but even the commission was of God’s grace.  God’s plan to unite people in Christ. – people who had been divided.  The plan was hidden until it was made known in Jesus.  The plan was made known by revelation to Paul on the road to Damascus.  Paul has become a servant of the good news of Jesus, again according to the gift of God’s grace.  All is grace.  “Although I am the very least of all the saints,” writes Paul, “this grace was given to me to bring the Gentiles the news of the boundless riches of Christ.” (8)  Saul was the one who Luke describes like this – “Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” Acts 9:1  A hatchet man for the Pharisees. The one who held the cloaks as Stephen was murdered.  Look what the grace of God did in him and through him.  It wasn’t all about looking back at who he had been for Paul.  As someone has said,  “The more he meditated on the blessings of God in Christ, and the infinite grace of his gifts, the more he realized that in himself there was nothing to make him deserve such mercy. He knew that he had no standing, no personal worthiness, no claim, no natural position or gifts, that he should receive the grace of reconciliation, and become a preacher of it. He was the very least of all. The gospel was everything…”

I know we’re not Paul but… How has God’s grace changed us?   How has a deeper understanding of the wideness of God’s mercy changed us?  How might it change us?  Paul is not telling his story simply for the sake of telling his story.  His story is a model for each and every one of us and the service to which we are called as the church.  How we do feel about the local church?  How do we not get discouraged?  Why do we continue to gather and to recall those simple but profound words “life together”?  Life in Christ together.  These are important questions, I believe, in a day when some of fallen out of the practice of “life together” in the local church.  I’m not talking about people who can’t come to church because of health or lack or mobility or other circumstances that keep us from gathering.  I’ve called this sermon “Church – Who Needs It?”  Paul does not want us to lose heart, and he reminds his readers here about the purpose of the church.  It’s not something that you’ll see written on the mission statements of many churches.  It might not even have been an answer we would have given had someone asked us “What is the purpose of the church?”

Listen this wild purpose of God for his church!

“… so that through the church, the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (v 10)  This is God’s purpose for the church.  These rulers and authorities in the heavenly places are hostile.  We’ve already heard Paul write of the ruler of the power of the air.  In 6:12 Paul will be more pointed – “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”   In the midst of these, the church is an outpost.  Lord do not let us fall away, and if we’ve fallen away may we come back.  In the midst of forces that would preach greed, fear, hate, division, oppression, gods of money/power/fame/influence/recognition, the kingdom of the self – we stand as an outpost and preach the kingdom of God.  Christ reveals God’s glory.  Christ is in you.  Christ is in us to reveal God’s glory.  It’s not just in our proclamation and praise of God.  By its very existence in Christ, the church stands as a new humanity (in Christ) in which divisions are overcome (in Christ), thus signalling to the heavenly powers that the gathering of all things in Christ has already begun and will one day be completed! And so we say “Amen.  Come, Lord Jesus!”  We can pray like that as we have access to God and boldness and confidence through faith in Christ.  And so Paul prays.  The digression is over.  “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven on in earth takes its name.” (14-15)  Paul had prayed at the beginning of his letter that his readers would be given a spirit of wisdom and revelation as they came to know Christ.   This second prayer is that we might comprehend or grasp divine love.  We learn to pray through scripture so let’s hear the prayer again:

“I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, that he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being (your heart/soul/inner essence) with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell (not simply reside but settle in) in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted (like a plant) and grounded (like a building) in love.  I pray that you may have the power to comprehend (to grasp, to take hold of), with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (16-19)

We’re in the realm of the inexpressible.  We’re asking for help with grasping the ungraspable.  We do so knowing that God is able to accomplish far more than we could ask or even imagine.  We’re thankful for songs that help us to get our hearts around the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love for us.  “How Deep the Father’s Love For Us”.  “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Saviour’s love?”  Tis mercy all immense and free, for O my God it found out me! 

This was Paul’s prayer for the people of Ephesus and by extension the Church.  I’ve called this sermon “Church – Who Needs It?” because we need it.  Transformative heart knowledge of the love of God is something that we share.  It is in the community of his people that God makes himself known to us.  It is in the community of his people that we grow in understanding of the height, width, breadth and depth of God’s love.    When mutual love is demonstrated in the community of God’s people, God’s love is seen.  To truly grasp or take hold of the love of God is to experience it in practical ways in the body of Christ that is the church.

Let us not be satisfied with shallow understanding of God’s love for us or memories of times past in which we experienced God’s love in some profound way.  May we be praying as a church that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit may be at home in us as individuals and in our church as a body.  I came across a paraphrase of Paul’s prayer.   May we make it our own:

“Father, all of creation in heaven and on earth owes its existence to you. Strengthen struggling Christians through your Spirit already living within them. Make them stronger daily in proportion to your unlimited supply of power. May Christ be permanently at home in their inner lives as they sustain their trust in you. Their roots already grow deep in your love for them. They have a firm foundation. Grant them, along with all your people, the power to grasp how infinitely and unconditionally Christ loves them. Fill them so completely with yourself that they will daily become increasingly more like you. We give to you alone all the credit for who they are and for what they will become. We know you are able to do infinitely more than all we can pray for or ever imagine possible. Your power at work within us has already proven that. May Christ’s church speak and live in ways that prove how worthy you are of praise, now and forever! Amen.”  (George Lyons in Ephesians Philemon Colossians: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition)

There were a lot of things that were competing for the attention of these 1^st century followers of Jesus.  There were a lot of messages around as to whom or what was due their allegiance/attention/devotion/adoration. Paul had spent three years in the city.  He was almost caught in the middle of a riot at one point (Acts 19).  What would he want to tell the people that he remembered and the people who had come to be “in Christ” since he left?

This letter is not so much to correct a problem going on in the church.  It’s not written so much to persuade or dissuade its readers and hearers.  It’s written that they may come to a deeper heart understanding of what it means to live “in Christ.”  Who are they?  How should they live?  Paul’s words speak to us through the Holy Spirit of God 2,000 years later.  Let’s come to God in prayer and ask for help as we begin at the beginning.

“May the words of my mouth, and the mediations of all our hearts, be pleasing to you O Lord, our rock, and our redeemer.”  Amen

I rarely do this but I have an alliterative list for today’s sermon!  We are going to look at how Paul writes of our Praise/Privilege, Purpose, Prayer, and Power in Christ.  Paul writes of where we stand, who we are, in the midst of a lot of different messages that purport to tell us where privilege, purpose and power are to be found.  I’m saying “our” privilege, purpose and power but Paul starts where we always must start – with God.  Before that though the greeting.  The good greeting.  “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (1-2)  To the saints.  To the followers of Jesus.  To those who are “in Christ.”  This phrase “in Christ” will be used by Paul in the next praise section 11 times.  It’s a great description of what it means to follow Jesus.  Jesus is not simply an object of belief.  To be in Christ means that Christ is the one in whom we live and move and have our being.  This is an all of life thing.  To live in Christ is to live with a sharing in, a fellowship with, a participation in (and all of these words fail to adequately express this truth) the life of the risen Lord Jesus Christ!

“Grace to you and peace” Paul tells his readers.  Grace is the unmerited favour of God.  We often associate God’s grace with mercy and forgiveness.  This is for good reason.  We have known mercy and forgiveness through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ (and we are reminded of this often in our benediction at the end of our service).  Before there was any need for mercy and forgiveness – in other words before humanity messed things up – there was God’s favour.  God creating all things and calling them good because God is good.  God creating an hospitable space for humanity.  This is grace.  God’s unmerited favour and goodness. God is not like capricious gods with whom we must try and curry favour, or who might treat us well or badly depending on their whims. (isn’t money a good example of this?)  Grace to you and peace.   Peace not simply as the absence of conflict but flourishing in every aspect of life. 

What does it mean to be privileged?  To start, Paul opens the curtain like an old-time showman.  There are truths beyond what we may see with our eyes as we go through our days.  Paul pulls back the curtain.  Paul wants us to keep these truths in front of us.  He starts with an 11 verse introduction which speaks of what it means to be people of privilege in Christ.  He does this in the language of praise.  We just spent around 8 weeks looking at the poetry of the Psalms and if you thought we’d be getting away from that by reading a letter – not quite yet!  Paul begins with a poetic hymn-like ode of praise to God which speaks of the privilege that is ours in Christ.  It may be that praise is always the best place to start. 

Praise/Privilege

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.  He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.”  (3-6)  See what I meant about good news?  We talked about our personal stories (testimonies as we say) last week as we looked at Psalm 116.  Here we have Paul opening the curtain on a description of God’s saving story.  To follow Jesus is to have our stories grafted into God’s saving story.  We were written into God’s story before the foundation of the world.

Aside – This talk of being chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world and destined for adoption as his children is not to solve the question of “What does it mean to be chosen by God and where does free will enter in to this?”  It remains a paradox and I believe we can hold two seeming opposites in tension.  God played a role in choosing us to become his children.  We play a role in accepting and believing.  Recall Jesus’ words to his followers in the Gospel of John (15:16) about them being chosen.  Recall Jesus’ invitation “Believe in the Father, believe also in me.” (14:1)  We hold these together lest we think that we’ve come to be in Christ through our own figuring things out, or that we fatalistically throw up our hands and say “Well it’s all up to God.”  Let us take this away from Paul’s words – God chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless before him in love; part of the family of God.

Purpose

We want to live with purpose.  A purposeless existence is no kind of existence is it?  Where do we find purpose?  Paul binds this idea up with God’s grand purpose.  It’s cosmic, literally.  “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.  With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fulness of time, to gather all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” (7-10)  In Christ, we have a personal experience of deliverance, of redemption (being brought back to God – something we could not have done on our own), of forgiveness.  God’s plan and purpose is not just for the salvation of individual souls.  It’s not even just for the creation of community called “the church.”  God’s plan involves, in the fulness of time, gathering up all things in heaven and on earth in Christ.  Jesus called it “the renewal of all things.” (Matt 19:28)  We hear about it in Revelation 21 when God’s voice is heard declaring “See, I am making all things new.”  The end of brokenness, of division, of hatred, of fear, of mourning and crying and pain.  This has begun in the life, death, resurrection and ascencion of Christ Jesus and one day it will be brought to completion.  In the meantime, followers of Christ are caught up in God’s grand purpose.  There’s a great phrase that is repeated three times in this hymn of Paul’s – “to the praise of his glorious grace” (6), “so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory” (12), “this is the pledge (speaking of the Holy Spirit) of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.”  We live in Christ for the praise of his glory. In other words, to make God’s glory known.  In other words to make God’s ways known in every thought, word, and deed.  There is an eternal cosmic significance in making God’s love/mercy/faithfulness/justice/grace known in even the most seemingly insignificant way.  May this great truth fill our days, we who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation, and have believed in him, and have been marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit. (13)

That’s a good prayer actually, “Lord, our purpose is to live for the praise of your glory.  May this great truth fill our days, we who have heard the word of truth, the good news of our salvation, and have believed in him, and have been marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit!”

Prayer

This is who we are.  We pray.  Paul prays for the sisters and brothers of Ephesus.  “I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers.  I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him.” (17)  Are we praying that for one another?  Let us start.  A spirit (the Holy Spirit at work in us) of wisdom.  Walking in the way of wisdom.  Walking in the light of God’s face.  Revelation.  The ways of God being revealed to us and through us.  “so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.” (18)  We know that light enters our eyes so that we can see.  In the ancient world, light was thought to go out from the eyes.  The quality of the light depended on one’s inner disposition and so affected how one saw things.  May our hearts be so enlightened by the light of Christ that we are ever more coming to see everything in the light of the hope that is ours – the assured expectation that is ours – and the power that is ours in Christ.

Power

Who are we?  How are we to live?  Paul is setting things up.  There’s a lot to come and we’ll get there God willing in the coming weeks.  There’s a great line coming up in this letter.  It goes like this, “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine…”(3:20)  To be “in Christ” means that the power of the risen Christ is in us.  It means that the power of God which raised Christ from the dead and seated Christ at his right hand is at work in us.  The church has sought and seeks power in different places.  Money.  Assets.  Political power.   The only power we need is the power of God that is far above any rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named (Washington, Ottawa, Wall St, Bay St, you name it) not only in this age, but also in the age to come.

I find this truth most comforting. God’s story, the story into which our stories are grafted in Christ, is bigger than my life, bigger than a church.  We had our monthly deacons meeting this week and one of the thing we looked at and talked was inactive members/adherents.  It’s a church governance thing in one way.  Who is able to vote?  In another way it was a list of people who aren’t here anymore.  They’ve gone to another church.  They’ve gone from the faith.  Who even knows because we’re not in touch.  It’s hard.  It can be demoralizing.  Paul knew about ups and downs.  Paul knew about “slight momentary affliction” (troubles, sorrows) (2 Cor 4:17) and he also knew how “slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.”  So we do not lose heart.  This is the power of Christ in me, as the song goes.  In us. 

Paul has pulled the curtain back and we have taken in the scene.  May the scene that Paul has described take on an ever greater weight of meaning in our hearts as we go through his letter in the coming weeks.  May this start today as we lift the bread that we break, and the cup of blessing that we bless; for are not these are sharing in the body and blood of our risen and reigning and returning Christ Jesus?

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!  Amen.  

This was good news.  There hadn’t been any rain in the land for three years.  Don’t we long to hear good news?  In the middle of everything, don’t we long to hear good news?  So, dear church family, hear this word from the Lord via brother Paul via me this day.  I’m hearing it too.  It’s from the end of the passage, so we’re beginning with the end.  We’re beginning with good news:

Christ has forgiven you.

Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us.

May we grasp these truths newly this day.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we listen for God’s word to us today. 

Here’s some more good news about what it means to be in Christ.  If you’ve heard me much at all you know I like this image a lot.  In Christ, you’ve been given a new set of clothes.  In Christ we’ve been given a whole new way to walk.  In Christ, we’ve been given a whole new set of clothes.  The gift of grace is always first.  I know that we’re in the part of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where is talks about what being in Christ looks like in our lives.  We always begin with the truth that we are in Christ.  It has always been this way with God.  Before giving the ancient Israelites instruction regarding how they should live, God reminded them of their relationship with him – “I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Exodus 20:1)  God speaks first of relationship and rescue.   “So then, “is how Paul starts v 25 to begin his  “Don’t do that do this” list, or “Not to do/To do” if you like.  Before that, Paul lays down some gospel truth (literally good news truth).  “Now this I affirm  and insist on in the Lord…”  The word translated insist is not Paul merely insisting on something as we would say “But I insist.”  It’s witness, testify.  “Let me testify,” says Paul and we say “Testify brother Paul!” 

Remember who you are, you all.  Remember whose you are, you all.  You have been brought from death to life.  You’ve been made one in the Holy Spirit of God.  Unified.  Not uniform, but unified.  There is one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in all.  Let us hear this good news.  This is our relationship.  This is who we all are in Christ. 

We’ve been given a new set of clothes.  I’m feeling most ecumenically minded these days. So ecumenically minded that I’m going to speak about infant baptism for a few moments.  I remember seeing the baptism of an infant at a Greek Orthodox Church for the first time (after having heard about it for a while with my whole Greek connection).  When a child is baptized in the Greek Orthodox church, the remove the child’s clothing.  The child is then immersed three times in the baptistry.  Afterwards, the child is given a whole new set of clothing – a dress or a little white suit typically.

Why is this so?  This goes back to a practice of the early church.  Baptism is a kind of initiation act into the church which includes the symbolism of dying and rising with Christ.  “I have been crucified with Christ” as Paul once wrote.  “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”  When the candidate was going into the baptistry, they would remove their clothing.  Once they were baptized, immersed (dying with Christ) and lifted up out of the water (rising with Christ), they were given a brand new robe.  We don’t baptize people without clothes in our tradition.  Here at Blythwood when you are baptized, you are given a white stole to wear on your shoulders as a symbol of new clothing.

Why am I going on so much about baptism?  Paul is speaking to those who have been crucified with Christ and raised with Christ.  Paul is speaking to those who are in Christ.  This is who we are in Christ.  Remember the good news with which we started.  Christ has forgiven you.  As we come to the table today we come with imaginary signs.  I can see them in my imagination. They’re neon and flashing) above our heads and the signs simply say, “Forgiven.”  Simply yet so profoundly.  Forgiven.  Live in love as Christ loved us.  Live in love for Christ loves us. We’re already nudging up against talk of how to live; of how to walk.  The heading above verse 25 in my Bible says “Rules for the New Life.”  Before we ever get there though, we rest in this truth of what it means to be in Christ.

We’ve been given a new set of clothes.  I/you have been given a new set of clothes.  Remember the word of the Lord from the prophet Isaiah.  “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” Fancy!  (Is 61:10)  Remember how the song went as the Psalmist sang, “You have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.” Ps 30:11b

New clothes.  This is who you were, this is who you are.  Remember.  I was dead and I have been brought to life.  I was blind but now I see – in a mirror dimly sure but one day I will know as I am known.  Before the “how” there is the “who.”  Before any talk of how we should live there is who God is and who we are in Christ and in the Holy Spirit of God.

“Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live in the futility of their minds.”  Paul is talking about pagans which simply means those who are not in Christ.  To live without Christ is to live in futility.  Things are tough out there in this old world and we recognize that.  We’re all of us in it if not of it.  Someone has put it like this:  “There is much sadness, pain, and regret packed into the word “futile”—endlessly striving and never arriving, forever searching and never finding.”  Chasing after wind.  Forever searching, never finding.  Forever seeking to be fulfilled, never being fulfilled.  Numbing ourselves.  It starts at an early age, as this cartoon from the New Yorker suggests.  I’ve learned the rules of the game and followed them and achieved the purpose of the game, but I feel nothing.

“They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart.  They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.”  We may hear this and say “Mmmhmm!”  We may also say “Hang on, some of my best friends are pagans.  Some of my family members are not in Christ.  They do moral things.” Of course.  We also pray that we would come to know Jesus and be in Jesus too, don’t we?  We also know that Christians aren’t always by definition loving and generous..  Paul knew this too.  His life had been saved once in Ephesus with the help of some city officials who were friendly too him.   (Acts 19:31)  Paul is speaking of an orientation of life without God that is ultimately futile, a chasing after wind, devoid of any kind of lasting meaning or purpose.  Then comes the turn.

“That is not the way you learned Christ!” (20)  Not learned about Christ, but learned him.  That is not the way you learned truth.  We learn Christ and we’re learning Christ.  We learn Christ by coming to him in trust.  We learn Christ by living life as parts of his body known as the church.  We learn Christ by spending time speaking to him and hearing him speak. 

We’ve been given a new set of clothes.  “You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts (misdirected desire of any kind), and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds (be transformed by the renewing of your mind), and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness.” (22-24)  We are a sharp group here and we want to be good students of the Bible.  I’m sure you noticed that our NRSV Bible says “Clothe yourselves with the new self.”  Is this a demand or is Paul talking about something God does?  Do we clothe ourselves with the new self or have we been clothed?  In the original we’re not told.  The original verb is infinite which is not definitive either way.  I think both are operative here.  God has given us a new set of clothes.  Wear them well, saints.  Let us put these new clothes on and wear our new clothes well.

So let us hear these rules, not simply as a burden or another burden on our already burdensome lives.  Let us hear them as welcome words.  Let us welcome them in these days when there is so much anger and so much division.  Let us welcome them in these days in which the level of public speech seems in so many ways to  have sunk to an all time low.  Don’t lose heart dear saints.  Don’t get sucked into the undertow dear saints.  Let us wear our new clothes well.  They have to do with our mouths or our speech, our hands, and our hearts.  They’re going to come at us quickly!

  Paul starts with four pairs.  Don’t do that, do this.  Let us be known not primarily for what we are against, but what we are for.  Put away falsehood, speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another.  We’re part of the same body.  Paul is speaking in terms of brothers and sisters in Christ here, but we’re in no way to limit this truth-speaking.  Be angry but do not sin.  Do not let the sun go down on your anger.  Righteous anger?  Ok but don’t let it turn to resentment and bitterness.  Give up stealing in all the ways we may steal.  Do work well (if we’re working) and do everything as if we were doing it for God.  In so doing everything can be done for the praise of his glory and we’ll be able to help others too.  Let no evil (literally rotten like rotting fruit) talk come out of our mouths but only what is useful for building up.  Are our words building up or tearing down?  Our we speaking blessings or curses, life or death?  So that our words may give grace to those who hear.

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit.  Remember the Holy Spirit that unites us with God and with one another.  The Holy Spirit is in you, and for me to speak or do untruth to you thwarts the transforming work of the Spirit of God in you and in me.  Put away (take off and get rid of) all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander together with all malice… How much does the world need this in us?

Be kind to one another.  Tenderhearted.  This is not simply a call to be nice.  I was speaking to someone recently who started working at a church.  They said “Everyone’s very nice!” I said “That’s a baselines expectation!”   Be kind.  Tender hearted.  Seeking nothing but one another’s good, even when it’s costly.  Forgiving one another because we are going to mess these things up.    

Which brings us back to the good news with which we started.  As God in Christ has forgiven you.  Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. We come to the family table, which has a dress code.  It’s not about whether we’re wearing a suit of a sweatshirt.  We’ve been given a brand new set of clothes.  Let us wear them well, this day as we gather, and every day as we go from here.  May this be true for all of us. Amen

“If there was only something that would unite us!”  In the middle of so much polarization, so much division, if only there were something or someone in whom we might be united.  If we have ever had such thoughts, let us hear the good news from Paul.

Of course, it’s not so much news today from Paul for the church.  We may have heard it before. May we grasp it in a new way?  This is the point in his letter – a letter being written to the church, to followers of Jesus – where Paul turns from mainly speaking about who God is and what God has done, is doing, and will do.  Paul now turns to what this means in terms of how we, as followers of Christ live.  He starts with the church.  He’ll go on to talk about our households, our jobs.  Paul starts with the church.  If we’re not getting it right in the church, with one another, we’ll hardly be getting it right out there.  “Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” writes Paul.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we turn to God’s word here.

We said in the beginning of this series that Paul wants the church in Ephesus (and by extension every church) to come to a deeper understanding of who they are in Christ and who and what they are called and enabled to be and do in Christ.  God is always where we start and it is with God that Paul has started.  We have heard of what it means to be in Christ.  Not simply holding Jesus somewhere out here as an object of belief, but living life in fellowship/communion/ connection/oneness in God through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit in us.  So we have heard over three weeks of being adopted in the family of God and living in the privilege of being daughters and sons of God.  We’ve heard of being given a purpose – to live for the praise of God’s glory.  To live in such a way that every word we speak and every action we take may reflect God’s love and mercy and compassion and justice and grace.  We have heard and given thanks for being brought from death to life in Christ.  We have heard about Jesus breaking down dividing walls of hostility within his church.  Jesus as our peace.  Jesus is our peace.  We have heard about another purpose of the church – to be a visible sign of the Kingdom of God in the face of spiritual forces that would promote and propagate hate, fear, division, greed, the kingdom of the self.  We heard that wonderful prayer of Paul that speaks of us having the power to comprehend, to grasp, to truly take hold of, all of us together, what is the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ.

So we’ve been sitting with these truths the last three weeks and I pray it’s been a blessing for us to sit with these truths.  Paul now turns to what these truths mean in our lives.  Some people would call this the application section, but I don’t.  Paul is not merely teaching here.  Paul is not simply seeking to impart a lesson and then give us some takeaways – like this were a seminar he’s giving.  Here’s the lesson, here’s the application.  We said three weeks ago that to follow Jesus, to live in Christ, is to have your story grafted into or caught up in or bound up in God’s great redemption story.  This is my story, this is my song. (We find out today that we all have a part to sing in this song!)

I prefer to think of it this way.  These truths that Paul is laying down in chapter 4 or not things that we take to apply to our lives.  We are called in Jesus to apply our lives to the truths that Paul has been laying down for three chapters (and which we just went over).  When we apply our lives – and I mean all that we are and all that we have, Paul does not call himself a prisoner in the Lord for nothing; when we name God as “the God to whom I belong” as Paul once did, it’s going to look like something in our lives, and it’s going to look like something in our life together.

“I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg of you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” v1.  Paul is not simply teaching and he’s not ordering either.  There’s nothing coercive about this Christ following life, you see.  Paul is pleading.  Begging.  Exhorting.  Parakaleo.  Same word that’s still used in Greek for “Please.”   One of the first words I learned in Greek as I was meeting Nicole’s family all those years ago.  Life a life.  Walk worthily in the calling to which you have been called.  I like this idea of walking.  Someone has said it’s not fly or rush or sprint or run.  Walk.  We can do that.  We are united by the Spirit of God in the bond of peace.  Jesus is our peace.  We are united in the Spirit of God. 

The unity that we have is a gift. It can’t be manufactured and we don’t need to call it up from within ourselves (or fake it for that matter).  We are called to make every effort to maintain it.  To keep it. To guard it because there are forces at work who would take it away.  He is our peace.  Jesus is our peace.  May the church be a place of peace.  To be so we need ongoing maintenance together.  So – “Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.” (1b-2)  Remember the One in whom we live.  Remember the One who said “I am gentle and humble in heart.”  Humility, patience, gentleness. 

An aside - Let me speak to the men for a few moments.  There’s a lot of talk in the culture about masculinity, toxic or otherwise.  What it means to be a man.  How men are voting etc.  We have to ask ourselves “How are we going to live?  What kind of men are we going to be?”  A focus on others or a focus on self?  Patience or a short fuse?  Being short-tempered (and isn’t anger an emotion that men are allowed to get to right away?) or long-tempered.  Aggressiveness (asserting my way and my rights and my lane and how dare you try to cut in front of me?) or gentleness – the power of God in us under control.  What’s the power of God in us for anyway?  To let us get our own way or to smite our enemies?  Or is the power of God in us to bring life, to restore, to repair, to bless even? – end of aside.

For all of us, the call here is to humility.  True humility that is other-valuing and other-serving.  True humility in which we recognize that we don’t have all the answers or that we’re not always right.  True humility that recognizes when we mess up and seeks to learn from it and rectify it if we can.  I’m often struck this phrase that people use when they win an award.  It happens all the time.  “This is so humbling.”  I wonder what’s humbling about it.  Maybe it’s just me, and maybe it’s good that I don’t win many/any awards.  I could see it being gratifying.  Why is it humbling?  If I were to give an award speech I might say something like “The temptation to pride is strong!”  Tue humility that recognizes our need for God.  True humility that recognizes that the One in whom we live came not to be served but to serve.

With gentleness.  Try a little tenderness.  With patience.  You’re hearing echoes of 1 Corinthians 13 here of course.  Love it patient.  Love is kind.  Love keeps no record of wrongs.  This isn’t just for weddings.  This is how Christ loves us.  This is the One in whom we live, saints.  Bearing with one another.  Putting up with one another.  Sometimes, believe it or not, we are hard to put up with.  I am, anyway.  Bearing with one another in love.  This is a good message for the church today.  We may be tempted to walk away from people who are hard to put up, people who annoy us.  We may even be encouraged to do so in the name of self-care.  I’m not saying that we’re called to stand fast in the face of abuse.  Let us ask God for wisdom and the ability to bear with one another.  I read one article whose headline was “I thought I was cutting all toxic people in life.  Turns out I was the toxic one.”

Let us walk worthily.  If we’re not getting it right here, we’re not getting it right when we go from here.  Remember who you are.  Remember whose you are.  Remember the God to whom we belong.  Remember that in Christ Jesus we are one.  Is it any wonder that calls for unity are so popular?  They touch something inside us that yearns for truth.  The people united shall never be divided.  One love, one heart, let’s get together and feel alright.  One love, one light, we get to share it.  Why do these message touch us so?  This is how God made us.  Where might we find this oneness? This is who we are dear church.  “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”  (4-5)

And we’re going to get mad at each other because we don’t like the same kind of music, or the colour of the sanctuary carpet?  Come on!

Come on.  Walk worthily of our calling.  This is Paul in preacher mode here:

There is one body united by one Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit of Christ in me is the Holy Spirit of Christ in you.

 We are united in the same hope, the same assurance, the same assured expectation.  The gathering together of all things in Jesus.  The renewal of things.  The new heaven and new earth.  The end of brokenness, injustice, separation, mourning, crying and pain.

One Lord.  One Jesus.  One Son.  One Christ.

One faith.  One trust that we share.

One God and Father of all, whose name we share, who is our authority and foundation, who loves us and carries us close to his chest like a shepherd carries a lamb, who is above all and through all in in all. How are we feeling about everything now?!

Let us walk worthily.  We are one.

Of course at the same time we’re different.  We’re diverse.  God has made us this way.  We are each and every one of fearfully and wonderfully made (some moreso than others!).  I like to look around a church gathering and consider all the different life experiences we have had, all the different places we have come from and have been, in order for God to have brought us all together in a particular time and space and place.  It’s amazing when you think of it.  The breaking down of divisions between us does not mean that we are absorbed into an amorphous blob or assimilated into a Borgian cube.  We’re different and we truly celebrate our differences because has gifted us differently. 

All is grace and God is grace and God is generous and God gives open-handedly.  Jesus descended and lived among us.  Jesus ascended to the right hand of the throne of his Father, and he gives us gifts.  We call them spiritual gifts because they’re gifts and they come from the Holy Spirit of God in us.  Different gifts are listed in different parts of the NT.  They can be divided into speaking gifts and acting gifts, and include things like teaching, mercy, administration, healing, prophecy, evangelising (telling the good news of Jesus).  We are not to compare ourselves favourably or unfavourably with one another as if we were in a spiritual gift competition.  The use of our gifts are for each and every one of us. 

Paul lists four gifts here and they all have to do with leadership in the church.  The thing is, they’re not so much gifts as people.  God has gifted us one another, and we’re all involved in being gifts to one another.  It’s not just to leaders we might say “Who do you think you are, God’s gift?”  We’re all God’s gift to one another in God’s grace.  Paul lists people here.  “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers…” (v 12)  While there may be debate about which of these roles were restricted to the earliest days of the church, the spirit of all of them is active.  Apostles as people who are went.  Prophets as people gifted to bring God’s word into various situations.  Evangelists as people gifted to spread the good news to those not in Christ (and we all have a role to play there surely).  Pastors as shepherds – providing food and protection for the flock, enabled by and modelled after The Good Shepherd.  Teachers teaching and encouraging others in truths of God.

The thing that I want us to pay attention to, however, is not just the function that these people who are gifts of God to the church perform, but the end goal.  Look at v 13 – “ to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…”  Someone has said that the church is not like a train, with all the passengers sitting inertly albeit comfortably being take to their destination, being brought there through the giftedness of their spiritual leaders.  The church is more like an orchestra or a choir, where all the players play or sing their part, contributing their part of the love song which is life lived in the grace of God and life lived in service to God – to make known the praise of his glory together.

We keep on living in this truth.  We don’t lose heart.  Until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.  Until then we’re all of us growing up, united in Christ like cells in a body.  Each of us crucial to the body’s healthy functioning.

Wouldn’t it be good if there was something or someone to unite us?  Church, this is who we are.  This is who we are called to be. Rooted and grounded in the love of Christ.  Bearing with one another in love.  Speaking the truth in love.  In Christ who is promoting the growth of the body which is his church in building itself up in love.

Let us walk worthily.  Let us love worthily with the same love and grace in which we live in Christ Jesus our head.  May this be true for all of us.  Amen.

To live in Christ is to have my story changed.  To live in Christ is to be brought from death to life.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we look at the words of Paul to the church this morning.

You’ve come a long way, Christian.  Perhaps it would be better to say, you’ve been brought a long way.  We’re talking about what God has done, how far God has brought us.  Before Paul writes of who we are, he writes of who we were.  Somone has said that before the gospel is good news (or before the good news is good news), it’s bad news.  This is where we were.  This is how we walked.  We were dead.

“You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived (in which you once walked), following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.  All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.” (1-3)

We weren’t literally dead.  Death here is a metaphor for life without God; existence apart from God.  We heard the same sort of thing in God’s instructions to Adam not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (Gen 2:17).  They didn’t die on the spot.  There was a breakdown in their life with God (communion with God, fellowship with God).  This was the beginning of God’s grand plan to bring us back to him.  We are called to remember our former state, not to inspire guilt or fear or sadness or shame, but to ever more deeply come to know and be thankful for what God’s grace means in our lives.  “You were dead” in the way you once walked, writes Paul, following “the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air (Satan, the accuser, the liar, the deceiver).  “The course of this world” simply means a life lived apart from God, in contrast to a life lived in acknowledgement of Christ as Lord, acknowledgement of God as foundation, love of God (remember “I love the Lord” from Psalm 116), love of humanity and love of God’s creation.  It is to contrast a life motivated by the desires of the flesh and senses – broadly meaning the desires and impulses of a self-centred life. We see evidence of this kind of living all around us.  John Stott described it like this:

“Wherever human beings are being dehumanized – by political oppression or bureaucratic tyranny, by an outlook that is secular (repudiating God), amoral (repudiating absolutes), or materialistic (glorifying the consumer market), by poverty, hunger, or unemployment, by racial discrimination or by any form of injustice – there we can detect the subhuman values of “this age” and “this world”.

I have to say once again at this point that Paul is writing here to followers of Jesus.  It’s perhaps only on the other side of the cross and our dying with Christ and being raised by Christ that we can appreciate former disobedience and language describing us as “by nature children of wrath.”  If you’re not a follower of Christ and you’re hearing this, you may say “Child of wrath?  I do my best to be a good person, give to charity, rinse my recycling etc.”  It’s perhaps only on the other side of the cross that we can more fully understand this kind of language.  At the same time, the Holy Spirit plays a role in convincing us of our sin, of our messing things up, of our need for God.  I would only say at this point, as we consider being brought from death to life in Christ:

Do you ever find yourself saying “This isn’t living.”

Do you ever find yourself saying “There must be more to life than this.”

We’re talking about being brought to life in Jesus, and we mean it.  We come to the turning point in verse 4.  The good news is always bad news before it’s good, and we’ve heard the bad news so that we who are in Christ may be thankful.  Here’s the good news – “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…” (4—5a)  In Christ, sin, going our own way, death, separation from God does not have the last word.  But God.  Someone has said that these words “but God” are two of the most powerful in the Bible:

Joseph to his brothers – “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” Gen 50:20 (NIV)

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” Psalm 73:26

“You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.” Acts 3:15 (NIV)

“But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

“All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.  But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (4-7)

What can we do but give thanks?  What can we do but give thanks to God for God’s grace?  What can we do but give thanks for the love of God?  God has made us alive out of the great love with which he loved us.  It’s always been about God’s love and it’s always been about grace.     “By grace you have been saved” Paul interjects in v5 and then repeats the thought in what may be one of the most well known verses in this letter – “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”  It’s always been about God’s love and grace.  No matter how undeserving or unlovely we are, God loves us.  In the story of God, it’s always been about God’s love and grace.  Listen to how Moses describes it to the ancient Israelites, the people through whom God would work out his salvation for the world – “It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you – for you were the fewest of all peoples.  It was because the Lord loved and kept the oath that that he swore to your ancestors, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharoah, king of Egypt.” (Deut 7:7-8)

It is because the Lord loved you that he brought you from death to life.  Let us not get boastful. Everything is grace.  Anglican Archbishop William Temple put it like this, “All is of God: the only thing of my very own which I can contribute to redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed.”

This is who we are, made alive in Christ for the praise of his glory.  To make God’s ways known.  The gospel is bad news before it’s good news, and then it’s very good news.  One of my favourite Christian authors is American Frederick Beuchner.  He describes the gospel as tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale.   A tragic or inescapable situation.  An unlikely hero or transformation or turn of events.  An unimagined outcome.  Here’s what he says:

THE gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word, that he is evil in the imagination of his heart, that when he looks in the mirror… what he sees is at least eight parts chicken, phony, slob. That is the tragedy. But it is also the news that he is loved anyway, cherished, forgiven... That is the comedy. And yet, so what? So what if even in his sin the slob is loved and forgiven when the very mark and substance of his sin and of his slobbery is that he keeps turning down the love and forgiveness because he either doesn't believe them or doesn't want them or just doesn't give a damn? In answer, the news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen to him just as in fairy tales extraordinary things happen… Zaccheus climbs up a sycamore tree a crook and climbs down a saint. Paul sets out a hatchet man for the Pharisees and comes back a fool for Christ. It is impossible for anybody to leave behind the darkness of the world he carries on his back like a snail, but for God all things are possible. That is the fairy tale. All together they are the truth.

We who are in Christ are called to live this truth.  “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life (or to be our way of walking).”  Last week we heard “You have the power of Christ in you.”  This week, “You are what God has made you!  You are God’s handiwork!”  Created in Christ for good works.  One might say at this point “You just said we are saved by grace through faith, not the result of works.”  Faith and works, what we believe and what we do, are not a dichotomy and they’re not one of those paradoxes of our faith.  They’re more like two sides of a coin.  The gratitude that we have for being brought from death to life, the love that we have for God who first loved us; these are to look like something.  God chose us that we might be holy and blameless before him in love.  God has prepared a walkway for us.  Let us walk it.  Someone has said that works are not the ground of salvation but its goal, it’s fruit but not it’s root.  We have been brought to life for the praise of God’s glory.  To make God’s ways known. 

We talked about this purpose last week, and Paul will get into more details later in the letter.  For today, good works are not just accomplished by professional Christians or formalized work like we do together in the acts of service in which we take part as a church (though they are that).  We’re talking about words and deeds that are reflective of God’s grace and love; these words and deeds start with those closest to us.  Our homes.  They go out from there.  Our schools.  Our workplaces.  Our shops.  Our libraries.  Our commutes.  These goods works are not the condition of us being brought from death to life, but the consequences for we who have been brought from death to life.

They are a reflection of our gratitude.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift! Amen

I love God.  Someone has said we love because God first loved us.  He has heard my voice and my pleading.  He hears my voice.  I’m going to call out to him as long as I live.  As long as I can call out.  If I can’t call out anymore, won’t you call out for me?  I remember when it was like death’s cords were pulling me down.  Death.  Not my own but the death of someone close to me.  I remember turning my face away from God and how it felt like a kind of death.  It certainly wasn’t living.  I called out.  I called out like the Syro-Phoenician woman, “Help me.”  The shortest prayer I know.  Save me.  Deliver me.

God did.  That’s what God does.  He’s gracious.  He’s righteous.  He’s about rightness.  He’s about mercy.  I knew rest.  I knew peace.

I love God.  To walk with God is to know life as it was meant to be lived.  No matter what my circumstances.  I heard the question recently “Is God worthy of my adoration/devotion/worship no matter my circumstances.”  The answer is “Yes.”  How can I ever repay what Jesus has done for me?  The thing is it’s not about repayment, like this relationship is transactional.  There’s enough transactionality in relationships already.  God is not about repayment.  The question is more one of “How should I respond to the love and grace and mercy of God in my life?  How should I respond to the hope and the peace and the joy and the love that I know in God?  I’ll call on his name every day.  I’ll make vows to Him in the presence of his people. “Every day I’ll thank you.  Every day I’ll praise you.  Every day I’ll remember you.” “Every day I’ll serve you.  I’m your servant, one of a family of servants.”  It sounds counterintuitive or at least highly unlikely I know, but I’ve found freedom in service to God.  So I offer myself to God in the presence of God’s people.  I seek God’s face in the presence of God’s people.  This is who I am.  This is what I do.  I love God.  “Hallelujah” is not just a Leonard Cohen song.  I say it.  I sing it.  Halle-lu-jah.  Praise ye the Lord. Praise ye Yah.  This is my story.  This is my song.  My story is a love song.

“I love the Lord…”  The Psalmist always starts in a good place.  Who do you love?  What do you love?  What is the foundational thing upon which your life is based?  The Psalmist starts by affirming where he stands.  I love the Lord.  This is the question.  This is, for the servant of the Lord, for the follower of the Christ, the first question.  It’s really the question for everyone.  We’ve talked about being Shema people before.  Do you want to be a Shema person?  The Shema begins Hear O Israel the Lord our God is one, and you will love the Lord with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your might.  This was the question that Jesus posed to Peter.  “Do you love me?”  Three times Jesus asked Peter the question. Well, do you?

“I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my supplications.”  Do not let us think, though, that this is simply some sort of quid pro quo.  Too often prayer has been reduced to that.  Us asking the deity for something and the deity showing his or her favour by granting it.  This is not what the Psalmist is singing about.  The original word order looks like this – “I love because the Lord has heard” or “I love because the Lord hears.”   The Lord hears because the Lord loves us. 

The Psalmist is not proclaiming his love for God out of the hopes of getting something out of it.  The Psalmist is proclaiming his love for God because God loves him.  “We love because he first loved us.”  This is how John puts it in his letter.  How do we know this?  Because he delivered us.  In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us, and sent his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Hear this great truth.  God chose us.  God committed himself to us.  Can you imagine?  Who would do such a thing?  Does that seem wondrous to you?  It should if we know ourselves well enough.  God delivers us.  This word for love here has undercurrents of meaning that have to do with choosing, with committing.  I choose God because God chose me.  I commit myself to God because God committed himself to me to the point where he came here to bring me back to him.  To bring us back to him.  To bring all things back to him.  The fitting and right response is to love him, to commit ourselves to him.  To sing this love song about him.

The 116^th Psalm is part of a group of six Psalms which are known as the “Hallel” Psalms.  Praise Psalms.  Spend some time with them.  They contain Hebrew Bible classics like “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!”  They are read at the celebration of the Passover.  Four cups are raised at the Passover table.  Psalm 116 is associated with the fourth cup.  Hear the line – “I will lift up the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord.” (13)  One writer describes the ritual like this – “The recitation of the psalms was introduced by a thanksgiving to the Lord, who ‘brought us from bondage to freedom, from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning to a Festival-day, and from darkness to great light, and from servitude to redemption.’”

What should our response be in the face of this deliverance?  Love.  As I said earlier, it’s not just emotion or sentiment.  What does this love look like?

Calling

It looks like calling on God’s name.  “The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish.  Then I called on the name of the Lord: “Oh Lord, I pray, save my life!”  Calling on God to save.  It’s where we started if you’re on this Christ-following road.  If you’re not it’s where you start, and the invitation is there.  It’s here.  Calling out to God to save.  Naming Christ as mine, as ours.  Praying “Our Father.”  Calling out “My Lord and my God!”  There’s a significance in naming God “my”.  It’s not proprietary.  It’s more I think a sign of commitment.  In my family, we would call relations “our”.  Our David.  There’s a Scottish comic called “Oor Wullie” in fact.  I’ve always liked this a lot.  It signifies belonging.  It signifies commitment.  We’re committed to you.  You’re ours.  I’ve chosen you.  We belong together.  Calling on the name of the Lord.  There’s something else about names.  They signify a relationship, don’t they?  One of the first things we find out about someone is their name.  It changes things somehow, knowing someone’s name.  We want to make sure we have people’s names right and are pronouncing them correctly right?  It’s significant.  Calling on the name of the LORD, of YAHWEH, of the one who saves.  Calling on the LORD’s name meaningfully and often in prayer, in worship, in song. 

Rest

Love looks like rest.  “Gracious is the Lord, and righteous, our God is merciful.  The Lord protects the simple; when I was brought low he saved me.”  Do you know what it’s like to be around people who love you and with whom you can rest?  People who have seen us at our most vulnerable?  People who have seen us at our lowest.  People before whom we don’t have to put up any pretence, and who love us anyway.  People who show us mercy in spite of ourselves.  I pray that this is the type of family God is making us at Blythwood.  It’s quite restful, isn’t it?  This is how God loves us and it means that we can rest in him and rest in his graciousness and rest in his mercy.  “Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dwelt bountifully with you.”  Rest in this.  This needs to mean actual resting and calling to mind what God has done in and through you.  What if we were to take these words to heart (or soul)?  Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.  Taking the time to dwell on how the Lord has dealt bountifully with us.  Taking the time to go to places where we recall together God’s great delivering acts.  Would we find our souls a little more at rest? Action

Because this love that we’re talking about is not merely a state of heart and soul.  There are actions involved.  “Faith without works is dead,” as James so famously wrote.  I would say the same about hope and I would say the same about love.  One writer puts it this way – “… love lives always as if in presence of the beloved.  It keeps the LORD always present to memory and to will.”  We know what this is like from our human relationships too, don’t we?  Keeping those we love present to memory and will no matter how near or far they may be.  Calling them to mind.  Living in such a way as to honour them and what they mean to us, the role that they played in forming us.  Those who love God are called to do the same thing with God.  Psalm 16:8 describes it like this – “I keep the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.”  Like a tree planted by the water.  Keeping Christ as our right hand.  Keeping Christ before us all the time in all the different ways we do that – prayer, reading, solitude, worship together, baptism, the Lord’s Table.  Leaving ourselves open to the Holy Spirit doing the Holy Spirit’s transformative work within us, making us holy and righteous and something new. 

Vow

Love makes vows.  It makes vow publicly and it is faithful to them.  “I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.”  We do these things together.  We’ve sometimes put a lot of emphasis on a personal relationship with Christ and we do have personal relationships with Christ when we follow him but we don’t follow him alone.  I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.  Verses 14 and 18.  Love fulfills these vows.  Vows bind the ones who are saved to the one who saves us.

Serve

Finally, love serves.  “O Lord, I am your servant; I am your servant, the child of your serving girl.  You have loosed my bonds.”  One writer has said, “A servant is one whose life is defined by belonging to another.”  This is not an easy message to accept, is it?  Our lives are supposed to be about self-determination after all.  We don’t like the words obey or obedient because they’ve been used by people to subjugate, to exploit, to limit, to circumscribe.  When we’re talking about obeying God we’re talking about listening to, we’re talking about learning from, we’re talking about belonging to because He made us to belong with him and live in loving communion with him.  Because this is where freedom is to be found.  This great paradox to which the follower of Christ commits him or herself – that true freedom is to be found in being bound to Christ.  If you are thinking that sounds crazy, I ask “But what if it were true?” What if it were true?  I believe it to be true friends.  I believe these words that I’m saying to be true.  If you believe them to be true you can show it in a few moments.  If you’ve never called on the name of the Lord you can do it here this morning.  If you’ve been calling on the name of the Lord all or most of your life we invite you to do it this morning in the presence of God’s people.  To recognize the one who brought us from bondage to freedom, from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning to a Festival-day, and from darkness to great light, and from servitude to redemption.”  Was it any wonder that it was the Passover meal that Christ celebrated with his followers on the night before died?  Reading this Psalm as he lifted that fourth cup.  “I love the Lord because he has my heart my voice and my supplications.  The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish.  Then I called on the name of the Lord; ‘O Lord, I pray, save my life.’  Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful.  What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me?  I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.  I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.”

This is a love song, my friends.  My story is a love song.  Each of us is invited to make our story a love song every day.  If you love the Lord a little and would like to love him more, lift up the cup of salvation in the presence of his people.  We’ll have a chance to make this vow before we pray.  “Here we offer and present our very selves to be a living sacrifice, dedicated and fit for your acceptance through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Living sacrifices holy and acceptable to God, made so by his sacrifice, dedicated to his service because you love him, because he first loved you.  May these things be true for us all.   Amen 

You may or may not know I’m a big Elvis fan.  The King of Rock and Roll.  The story is told of a 1974 show in South Bend IN.  A fan held up a sign which announced Elvis as “The King.”  Elvis saw the sign and stopped for a few moments.  He told the audience, “I can’t accept this kingship thing because to me there’s only one King, and that’s Christ.”  Psalm 24 speaks of God’s kingship.  What does it mean to call God King?  What does this mean for those who call Jesus, Lord?  Who is this King of Glory and what is this King like? Let us look at this 24^th Psalm and see what God has to say to our hearts.

We’re coming to the end of our summertime look at the Psalms.  Seeing what they have to say to us, how they shape us, affect our prayer life and our worship together.  This morning’s psalm speaks to the foundation of our faith.  God is King.  Jesus is Lord. “Who is the King of Glory?”  we sang earlier.  “The King of Love My Shepherd Is” we’ll sing later.  Listen to the note of joy with which the song starts.  This is how the psalmist starts – “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.”  The original word order has God or YAHWEH first.  “The Lord’s is the earth, and all that fills it.”   Everything has been made by God. We share a kinship or relationship with everything animate and inanimate because of this truth – we are made by God.  Take a walk outside and every single thing you look at is God’s creation.  In the story of Francis of Assissi and the Wolf of Gubbio, Brother Francis calls the wolf “Brother Wolf.”  Francis extended this idea of fraternity and sorority to inanimate parts of creation in his “Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon”:

Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord, All praise is Yours, all glory, all honour and all blessings.

Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures especially Sir Brother Sun, Who is the day through whom You give us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour,

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars, In the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air, And fair and stormy, all weather’s moods, by which You cherish all that You have made.

Praised be You my Lord through Sister Water, So useful, humble, precious and pure.

If we stopped to think about this meaningfully and often, do you think it would make a difference in how we saw things?  Do you think it would make a difference in how we viewed nature and natural resources?  Would we consider the primary owners of natural resources to be nation-states?  Corporations?  Individuals?  Would it make a difference in how we viewed our own role as believers that God made all things and called them good?  That in Christ, God maintains and sustains all things and that in Christ all things hold together? 

It’s a fundamental part of our worldview – of how we view the world.  Like any belief, it’s not meant to exist in a vacuum.  It’s not meant for us to believe something like “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it… and all who live in it” and it does not affect how we view things and the actions that we take. 

“For he has established it on the seas, and established it on the rivers.”  I’ve spoken before about this OT image of God as a subduer of chaos in creation.  The sea was thought to be a place of chaos and disorder to the ancient Israelites.  In naming God as creator we are asserting that it is in God that order is to be found.  That well-ordered existence is to be found.  That peace is to be found.

You might be saying “I’m with you so far, but what does this mean in terms of how we’re supposed to live our lives?”  Faith doesn’t indeed exist in a vacuum.  What does it mean to our lives?  What should our lives look like if we believe that God is King and that Jesus is Lord and it’s not simply something we put on our cars or our t-shirts or walls or wherever we proclaim this? 

Seek his presence.  Seek God’s presence. Seek his face.  Listen to your heart.  Remember “My heart says “Seek his face”.  Your face O Lord do I seek.  Make that your prayer.  Who we are is founded in who God is.  The question of who we are in God is now addressed.   “Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord?  And who shall stand in his holy place?”  The psalmist is singing of the Temple of Jerusalem.  The place where God was present.  The place where God was present was holy.   Who could stand in such a place?

“Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to another, and do not swear deceitfully.”  Easy right?  Who can say this?  Anyone meet this list of qualifications?  Of course, we don’t.  It’s a bit of a trick question because this is not a list of qualifications that you must fulfill before you seek and know God’s presence.  The only qualification you need to seek and know God’s presence is a knowledge of and acknowledgement of your need for Him.   We don’t come before God based on any righteousness of our own.  We don’t come before God based on any cleverness or intelligence of our own.  Calling on Jesus as Lord means recognizing our need to be made into someone new.  It means recognizing that this doesn’t happen without God.  It means seeking and knowing God’s presence in order that we might be made righteous – made right, made whole, made well.  One writer puts it like this – “The righteous one seeks the righteousness of God by seeking God’s own presence in the midst of the worshipping community.”

So what’s the answer to “Who could do this?” or “Who is sufficient for these things?” That was the question Paul put to the Corinthians.  The one who seeks God’s face and cries out “Have mercy on me, a sinner!”  That’s our only qualification.  It doesn’t mean that we wallow in our sin.  It doesn’t mean that God’s grace is simply an excuse to intentionally miss the mark or come up short.  This song reminds the worshipper that making us clean, purifying our hearts, keeping us from lifting up our souls to false gods or swearing deceitfully (making a show of worship as an outward sign and not meaning any of it – going to church each Sunday with a Bible tucked under our arm and bowing down to the gods of nationalism or consumerism or acquisition or greed or envy or self-sufficiency or any of the gods that we bow down to) – this is what God does.  God changes us when we seek His face.  This is the promise.  “They will receive blessing from the LORD, and vindication from the God of their salvation.”  To sing that Jesus is our King has connotations.  Cleans hands and a pure heart.  External actions which reflect a transformed heart – the centre of our thoughts, emotions, and will.  Our acknowledgement not of our own righteousness, but of our ongoing need of God’s grace and mercy.  Our acknowledgement of our dependence on God for an integrity of life in our hearts and hands (and our tongues).  Our acknowledgement that a well-ordered life of hope/peace/joy/love is found in God alone.  Someone has described this Psalm as the community singing itself toward faith; the song making it possible to imagine life differently.   God is shaping us/forming us/making us right when we seek his presence. We’re called to seek His face together, of course.  I want to take that seriously with you all.  They will receive blessings from the Lord – the blessing of being made right, of being made anew.  Don’t we need that? 

Do you want that?  What is our God like?  What is the God to whom I belong, like?  What does it mean to be God-like?  Important question.  There’s a wonderful description of what our God is like in Psalm 89 – “The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours… You have a mighty arm; strong is your hand, high is your right hand.  Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.”  Do you want to serve this God?  Do you want to follow this God?  Do you want to seek this God’s face?  Let us seek His face together, for such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.

The Psalm ends with worship.  “Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the king of glory may come in!”  It is thought that this psalm was sung when the Ark of the Covenant was brought to the temple.  This title for God “the king of glory” was associated with the Ark, which was the visible sign of God’s presence among his people.  You can imagine a group of people returning after a battle, coming to the city gate.  The watchers there have their heads bowed – hangdog expressions.  They wonder how things turned out.  Downcast faces signalling the lack of hope.  Bowed faces signalling despair.  The cry is heard “Lift up your heads, O gates!  Be lifted up O ancient doors that the King of glory may come in.”

Who is this King of Glory?  Good question.  The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.  What does he look like?  A little baby crying out in the night.  A man stretched out on a cross.  The Spirit who was sent and is sent to his followers to literally inspire us – to give us life.  This is the King of Glory!  Lift up your heads and welcome him.  This is the invitation.  Lift up your heads and welcome him so that we may be lifted up – that we may be transformed into his image.  That we may be made righteous, made right, made whole.  Lift up your heads O gates! 

There’s a great paradox in this of course.  The ancient Israelites were aware of one too.  How could the creator and sustainer of all things also live in a temple?  What temple could contain him?  It’s the same thing for us.  Of course, something has changed.  We’re now the temple.  We’re the dwelling place of this King.  Do we take that seriously?  We need to take that seriously if we’re going to profess Christ as King.  We need reminding of this - of course we do.  The church in Corinth did.  Paul wrote to them “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?  For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”  Therefore seek God’s face so that God’s ways - love, mercy, grace, justice – may be known in and through you.

God’s transcendence and God’s immanence.  The creator and sustainer of the universe living within us.  I can’t explain it.  I don’t think we have to.  There’s nothing wrong with a little paradox.  There’s nothing wrong with holding, at once, two seemingly opposite things that are both true.  We wouldn’t want to follow a god we could fit into some non-paradoxical box, would we?  This is not the King we serve.  The King we serve is the creator and sustainer of all who makes his home within us if we but lift up our heads and cry out “Have mercy on me, change me, make me like you to show your glory.”

Elvis was famous for transforming music.  Instrumental in the creation of something new – rock and roll.  He became known as its king.  He knew there was a greater King.  One who is all about creation and transformation.  One who is all about making something new.  He makes something new of us.  One day we’ll hear him say “Look, I am making all things new.”  

This is the King that we serve my friends.

Amen

In conversation with some friends this summer, we were talking about the good effect that literature can have on a person.  My father (who died 20 years ago this year) and I shared a love for George Elliot (Mary Ann Evans).  I have one of my father’s copies of The Mill on the Floss, and as you may know, Reverend Thomas liked to inscribe his books.  This is what he wrote – “This story has the effect of making me want to be a better person.”  What is the good life?  What does it mean to be good and how can one live such a life?  Let us look

So far this summer we’ve looked at Psalms of lament, of paise, of thanksgiving, of trust, and of remembrance.  We’ve been talking about Psalms as prayers and how making them part of our prayer life shapes us.  This morning we’re looking at what’s known as a Wisdom Psalm.  Wisdom literature in the Old Testament concerned itself with what it means to live a good life.  It usually delineates this as a choice – between the wise and the foolish for example, or as the case of Psalm 1 the righteous and the wicked.  There are two ways that are being described here.  This does not permanently assign people to one category or the other.  Neither does it mean that one may not act in an immoral or moral way no matter which path one is on. When we consider the way that we are on, there is a choice that lies before us.  The choice lies before us every day.

It’s a choice that is fundamental to the Psalms, and this Psalm is considered rightly as an introduction to the whole collection of song/prayers.  Make the Way of God your path and make the Psalms a way in which you listen to God’s voice.  Psalm 1 is not a prayer itself so much as a beatitude – an instruction about what it means be in a good place or to be in a good situation.  To be on a good path.  “Happy are those….”  “Blessed are you…”  “Happy” doesn’t quite do the word justice.  In a good situation are those.”  “Oh the joy of those…” is one way this is translated.  It’s important to note that the Psalmist is not simply talking about happiness that is dependent on circumstance (as in those t-shirts or coffee mugs of my youth that said “Happiness is a warm puppy.” 

It’s always important that we define terms.   How would we answer the question “Does following Christ make you happy?”  This is how the Psalm starts – “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked…”  What does it mean to be happy?  

There are a lot of messages out there that describe what it means to be happy.  Imagine the freedom.  Imagine winning so much money that you had to hire a dream coach to help you dream bit.  Wouldn’t that make you happy?  If you lived in this place or bought this product or looked a certain way you would be happy, or at least happier, right?  If you aspired to and reached a certain type of lifestyle, you would be really happy.

We’re talking about a fundamental question of how we live our lives.  The Psalmist points to something else.  A choice that is before us, as I said, every day.  We start off with a beatitude, which describes what blessed people don’t do first of all – “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take a path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers;”  There’s an interesting thing going in here that we lose in our NRSV translation.  Our NRSV Bible generally goes for gender neutral terms.  The original reads “Happy is he…” while the rest of the terms here are plural – the wicked, sinners, scoffers. This speaks I think to the choice that we’re talking about.  It’s an individual choice.  We are being addressed individually here.  When we read this gateway Psalm, we are being invited to examine ourselves.  We’re invited to examine the choice that we are making every day.

What all this talk of two ways comes down to is essentially this – do we choose to live a life that acknowledges our need for and dependence on and regard for God or do we choose to live a life based on self-reliance and self-sufficiency and self-regard?  This is what it all comes down to.  I can’t make the choice for you, you can’t make it for me.  You can’t make the choice for your children or your parents or your friends.  The question for me and for you is – “Do we want to commit ourselves to a life in which we turn toward God and seek his face and praise and thank and lament and remember and have confidence in and all those things that we’re talking about these summer weeks as we are immersed in the Psalms?”

Well, do you?

If the answer is yes, this life will look like certain things, which we’ll talk about in a few moments.  First though the Psalmist talks about what it doesn’t look like.  Notice how the action described here gets more and more involved – Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers.

Aside – these lines are not to instruct us to sequester ourselves away from the world.  We’re not called to exclude ourselves from any association with people who hold a different world-view.  Wasn’t that what Jesus ministry was partly about?  Eating and drinking with sinners?  With those who did not see their need for God?  With those who said “Leave us alone!”  God did the exact opposite.  We’re not called to leave people alone.  There’s too much loneliness around as it is.   We’re called to watch that we’re not unduly influenced or affected by this view.

The Psalmist is describing a world view here which says “I have no need for God or God’s ways.” There’s a great line to describe such people in Job 21:14 – “They say to God, ‘Leave us alone! We do not desire to know your ways.  What is the Almighty that we should serve him?  And what profit do we get is we pray to him?’  Is not their prosperity indeed their own achievement?”  Well, isn’t it?  There’s a lot of that around us, isn’t there?  Self-interest.  Self-regard.  Self-absorption.  It’s the view that asks questions like “What’s in this for me?”  That dismisses dismisses care and concern for others with a curt, “Nothing to do with me.”  That looks at public policy primarily with the question “How does this affect me?”  It’s nothing new.  Alexis de Tocqueville was a French Foreign Minister.  He wrote this about a particular nation – “Each citizen is engaged in the contemplation of a particularly puny object, namely himself.”  He wrote that in 1835.  Plus ca change.  We need to be brought outside of ourselves for wholeness of life. 

So what is the key to wholeness and fullness of life?  Hear the call – “… but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.”  Now you’re maybe saying, “Oh that is so typical OT David, all this talk about law and the OT is always all about law and the NT is all about grace – almost as God changed somehow.”  How are we supposed to be delighting in laws, aren’t they just there to restrict us and spoil our fun?  The word that’s been translated “law” here it torah, which has many applications, including a description of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.  The foundational meaning of torah is instruction or teaching.  Instruction.  Isn’t that good?  To be a follower of Christ is to be a disciple which means student.  To sit at Jesus’ feet and hear and do.  “Their delight is in the instruction of the Lord, and on his instruction they meditate day and night.”  This is partly an introduction to the Psalms and an invitation to meditate on them.  It’s also an affirmation that the means to meditate on God’s ways and receive instruction are found in the Psalms.  That’s why we’ve been so big on memorizing them traditionally, and it would probably be a good thing to get back to.  That word for meditate is also used for murmuring or moving one’s lips.  Murmuring things like “The Lord is my shepherd, I want for nothing.”

Here's the thing about the Psalms.  They give us a language for lament, praise, thanks, remembrance, trust.  We need such language. 

To lament and ask, “How long O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” Ps 13:1  In our grief and mourning to ask those questions we heard in Psalm 77 “Has his steadfast love ceased forever? Are his promises at an end for all time?” Ps 77:8.  To hear that still small voice say “No.”  To be prompted to praise with “I will extoll you, my God and King, and bless your name forever and ever.  Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever.  Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, his greatness is unsearchable.” Ps 145:1-3.  To remember that weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning and to give thanks with “You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.  O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.” Ps 30:11-12.  To remember and say, “I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord; I will remember your wonders of old.  I will meditate on all your work, and muse on your mighty deeds… Your way was through the sea, your path through the mighty waters…” Ps 77:11-12, 19a.  To trust and sing “The Lord’s my shepherd I’ll not want…”

We’re talking about life.  Wholeness.  Fullness of life.  What would it be like for me to live in those truths?  What would I be like?  What are you like, to know God as your light and salvation through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ?  Do you know what you’re like?

“They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.  In all that they do, they prosper.”  What a wonderful image.  They are like trees planted by streams of water.  Rooted and grounded in and connected to the one who described himself as living water.  There is an 19^th century African American spiritual that goes “I shall not be moved, like a tree planted by the water, I shall not be moved.”  This is where I have been planted in Christ.  The source of light and life.  It’s a beautiful image.  Our neighbours had to move a Japanese maple from their front lawn.  They were keeping it an old recycling box.  No kind of life for a tree, but it kept on somehow.  I asked “May I take that tree?”  I planted it in our back garden – rooted and grounded and getting lots of water and it’s doing great!  Jeremiah uses the same image in Jer 17:7-8 “Blessed (happy) are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.  They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”

This is trust in God.  This is the result.  Fruit.  Life in Christ is like a tree planted by the water that shall not be moved, rooted and grounded beside the streams and not fearing when heat comes (because heat will come), and being able to face drought (and drought will come), with a confident faith in which we hold together praise and lament and thanks and trust, secure in the one who holds us in his hands.

This is our faith.  This is our trust.  In making these statements of what it means to live a life of wholeness, a blessed life, a happiness which speaks of fullness of life, we must keep in mind that these are statements of faith.  The Psalmist is not speaking of life experience when he says that those that delight in God’s instruction prosper in all they do.  We don’t succeed in everything we do, do we?  The Psalmist is affirming that the way of faith – the way of grace is the way that is lasting.  That the way of trust in God is the way that leads to life.  That fullness of life is to be found in communion with God.  That life without God, that separation from God is death.  The choice is yours.  It’s mine.  It’s everyone’s.   The way of grace is the way to life eternal, life from above, life abundant, lasting always.

And it’s always been about grace you know.  It’s never been a case of OT law and NT grace.  It’s always been about God acting, God revealing himself, God instructing.  Ps 37:31– “The law of their God is in their hearts; their steps do not slip.”  Ps 40:8 “I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”  God had revealed himself to the people of Israel.  In deeds and in words.  God’s instruction or teaching was the delight of the Psalmist.  Years later there would be a whole new thing to delight in.  God would be revealed in the Word who became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.  So that we might be brought back to him who loves us and created us in and for love.

I believe these words to be true my friends.  I want to seek God’s face and wait on him and be like a tree planted by water with all my heart.  May this place beside the river of living water be the place where each and every one of us finds wholeness, fullness of life, joy, blessedness, our happiness.  May this be true for us all.

Amen

What’s my angle?  When we come together before God we want to hear good news, and here’s the first bit of good news.  The message is not “Trust me” or even “Trust us.”  We’re going to begin with the end, though this good news encompasses the beginning, middle, and the end.  It’s “Trust God.”  This morning we’re looking at a Psalm of confidence.  A Psalm of trust in God.  Let us look at Psalm 27 this morning and hear what God has to say to our hearts as we seek His face.

Many people name Psalms of Confidence as their favourite.  Psalms that confidently speak about who God is.  The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  The Lord is your guard and your shade.  The Lord is my strength and my song.  What beautiful imagery.  They speak about what the Lord does.  He makes me lie down in green pastures.  He will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble.  He will set me high on a rock.  They don’t specify the trouble which the psalmist faces.  As we’ve said through these weeks, these songs/prayers apply to any situation in life… or death.  It’s interesting that the two lines from the Psalms which Christ prays from the cross are a cry of lament – “My God my God why have you forsaken me?” and a cry of confidence – “Into your hands, I commend my spirit.”

Psalms of confidence speak to something fundamental about what it means to follow Christ.  They say something fundamental about the nature of faith.  About what it means to believe.  To believe in God, to follow Christ, is to trust.  Following Christ is not just about merely assenting to a set of propositions.  Of course, there are things which we believe.  We believe that Christ is the Son of God, we believe that Christ died and rose again and is seated at the right hand of the Father from whence he will come again.  We believe in the Holy Spirit’s presence and guidance.  We believe all those things and they don’t offend our intellects.  We do not check our intellects at the door.  At the same time, we freely admit that there are matters beyond our understanding; that awe and wonder are in order as faith seeks understanding. We don’t check out intellects at the door while recognizing that this is no dry intellectual exercise with which we are engaged friends.  Following Christ is not simply a belief in the existence of the divine or some ethereal unsubstantive cosmic force or good vibes. It’s a question and the question is ever before each of us no matter where we stand today on matters of faith.  Here it is.  “Whom do we trust?”  In whom or in what do you trust?  On what do we base our lives?  To what do we commit ourselves?  What are we committed to?

This is how the song starts.  With the answer.  The LORD.  YAHWEH.  The one who has made himself known as a deliverer.  The LORD is my light and my salvation.  The light.  The one who drives away darkness.  The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.   The LORD is my salvation.  We talked about this last week.  Remembering our deliverer.  Remembering the one who makes a way.  The root word is translated help, deliverance, and save.  One writer puts it like this – “It covers a wide range of meanings, indicating deliverance, liberation from any kind of restraint or oppression, physical, mental or spiritual.  It points to a life of wholeness and freedom under God, a life in which people have the space to be what God intended them to be.”  Who does God intend us to be?  His beloved children bearing his image and being formed into that image through the life and death and resurrection of his son in the power of his Holy Spirit.  “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (v1)

Now you may be sitting there saying “This is all very good and true David but you’re not telling us anything we don’t already know or haven’t heard thousands of times.”  Again, we need to be reminded.  Because circumstances arise in our lives that make these truths hard to see sometimes.  Because circumstances swirl around us that would cause us to fear.  We remind one another because confessions of confidence like this are not meant to be done solely on our own.  Trust is not a personal project based on our own resolve or own willpower.  We come together to be reminded that the LORD is our light and salvation and guard and shade and strength and song and to ask – “Of whom shall I be afraid?” in confidence and answer like they used to in the Bad Boy Furniture ads here in the GTA and say “Nobody!” Nothing!

We need to be reminded because we will be found by days of trouble.  The first half of this Psalm (vv 1-6) is a profession of confidence in God.  The second half (vv 7-14) is a prayer that contains a lot of lament.  The Psalm is a recognition that days of trouble find us.  That we don’t always go from strength to strength.  The Psalmist describes these days as evildoers assailing him to devour his flesh (figuratively speaking), as an army encamping against him and war rising up against him (maybe not figuratively speaking).  The Psalm is a confident assertion that the singer has nothing to fear because as someone would later put it, there is nothing that will separate him from God’s love – For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)  

Do you need to hear those words?  I need to hear those words – often and meaningfully.  What might it mean for us to have that kind of confident trust?  The kind that enables us to truthfully say “Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.” (v3)

How could we get to such a place?  What would we need?  V4 – “One thing I asked of the LORD that I will seek after: to live in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple.” 

To live in the house of the Lord.  The temple was where the presence of the Lord resided for the ancient Israelites.  The Psalmist longs to live in the presence of God every day of his life.  To see the beauty of God.  To see the beauty of God’s love, God’s grace, God’s compassion, God’s justice, God’s tenderness, God’s strength.  To be ever more at home, hidden in the shelter of God’s house in the day of trouble, concealed under the cover of God’s tent, set high on a rock.  Living the shalom life!  Remember the question that Andrew and another disciple asked of Jesus in John 1 as they began to follow Jesus?  “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  Where are you living?  We want to be where you are.  We want to be in your presence.  “Come and see,” Jesus told them.   The Psalmist longs to be in God’s presence every day of his life. 

We trust in God who has proven himself to be trustworthy.  To live in Christ is to remember Christ’s promises.  It’s unimaginable to be abandoned by a parent, though it’s not impossible.  “If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.” (v 10)  How can we hear this and not think of Jesus’ promise, “I will not leave you orphaned…” (John 14:18)  How can we not hear Jesus’ words echo, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20)  To live in Jesus - to live in the truth of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” - is to make a home for the Holy Spirit, and to be at home with God.  We gather together to praise together, to give thanks together, to remember together, and to express our confidence together.  We do this and offer sacrifices.  The sacrifice of ourselves.  The sacrifice of abandoning ourselves in loving trust in our delivering God.  Hearing one another offer shouts of joy, and singing and making melody to the Lord. 

Following Jesus is like a trip (that’s why it’s called The Way).  To be in Christ on the Way is to be at home on the way.  To be at home on the way is to come to see the beauty of the Lord – God’s love, compassion, strength, justice, mercy, tenderness – everywhere.  To see a sparrow and have it remind us of God’s provision and care even for the tiny sparrow.  Not one falls to the ground apart from our Father.  To hear a song that touches us deeply – to sing or play such a song.  To see someone comfort the sorrowing.  I will never forget one of my first experiences of being with a family whose husband and father had died at Sunnybrook Veteran’s Centre. We were all around the bed.  The man’s wife needed to be helped to a chair, she was overcome.  One of the nurses helped her get to the chair.  When the wife was seated, the nurse got down beside her and put her arm around her.  That was reflective of God’s care and compassion.  It was beautiful.  May we ask God give us eyes to see his beauty expressed in his love all around us every day?  May He give us the wisdom to ask for guidance and the courage to follow where he would lead us?

It’s a lifetime process.  It’s something we need to persevere in, to hold fast to, to encourage one another in.  To take the time to stop.  To be silent.  To be able to hear our hearts.  To be able to hear that still small voice nudging our hearts.  “Come,” my heart says, “seek his face.”  Thank you, my heart, for reminding me!  Come, seek his face.  What does this look like practically?  We’ve been talking about it over these 4 weeks and we’ll keep on talking about it.  Praising God.  Maybe in song.  Maybe in word.  “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”  To give thanks.  To say thank you.  To remember God’s acts of deliverance as they’ve been passed down to us in God’s word.  To remember God’s acts of deliverance in our lives.  To trust.  To place our confidence in.  To say along with the hymn writer “Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.”  To listen to our hearts when they’re saying “Come, seek his face!” and turning to God and saying yes and praying “Your face, Lord, do I seek.  Do not hide your face from me.”

Because these promises can be hard to see.  Circumstances can make them hard to see.  Things don’t turn out the way we thought they would.  We lose things.  We suffer loss.  I don’t need to paint the picture for you. 

And yet, loss need not have the last word.  And yet there’s something inside us that says “Seek his face.”  We need to listen to that heart voice.  It’s how God created us.  To seek him.  How is it going with your seeking of God’s face?  Good? Bad?  You have no idea.  Great, it’s excellent and God’s changing you in ways you never imagined.  You’re seeing things in ways you never thought possible?  Or maybe it’s terrible and you feel you’re seeking the wrong things – because we’re going to be seeking something.  If you ever want to talk about any of that I’d love to talk about those things. 

Listen to the prayer in verse 11.  “Teach me your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path.  Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen up against me, and they are breathing out violence.”  In ancient Israel, they didn’t have trials with lawyers and evidence and so on.  A false witness, a liar, could mean bad news.  Who is our enemy if not the liar.  The accuser.  The voices that say “Your worth as a person is in what you earn/produce/consume/look like/number of followers/likes.”  The voices that say “What makes you think you’re worthy of this kind of love?”  The voices that say “You don’t need God and in fact that’s only for people who are weak or deluded or stupid.”  These voices swirl around us all the time.  Take the time to listen to that heart voice that says “Seek his face.”  That is where salvation and deliverance and wholeness and peace and life are to be found.

The psalm ends with another great statement of confident faith in v 13.  “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”  To follow Jesus is not simply to hedge our bets for the afterlife.  To follow Jesus is to see God’s goodness in the land of the living – right here.  No matter our circumstances.  If God’s way-making footprints are hard to see, It doesn’t make the promise any less true.

The psalmist goes from I to You at the end of the song.  “Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (v14) He’s with us.  He’s promised never to leave us or forsake us.  Thousands of years later we repeat the words – “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”   May such confidence and trust be our friends.  May God grant that this be true for us all.

Amen

The last two Psalms we looked at were Psalms of David – basically individual Psalms, though we talked about how the Psalm of Thanksgiving was used at a temple dedication.  The Psalm that we’re looking at this morning is part of Book III, which goes from Psalm 73 to 89.  You’ll note that Psalms 73 to 83 these are entitled “Of Asaph”.  The Asaphites were a guild of temple musicians, so these Psalms were composed to be sung in the temple – together. 

Remembering is something that we are called to do together.  The Psalm starts off and the form should look familiar.  The song starts as a lament, which begins with a complaint: “I cry aloud to God, aloud to God that he may hear me.”  The word order here in Hebrew is messed up, just as the singer is.  “My voice to God.”  The language here reflects the state of mind of the singer.  “In the day of trouble, I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying; my soul refuses to be comforted.  I think of God, and I moan; I meditate and my spirit faints.”  The Psalmist is feeling God’s absence.  The idea of remembering is introduced in this lament section, but it brings no relief.  The remembering here is self-focused.  There’s no direct address to God.  “I consider the days of old, and remember the years of long ago.  I commune with my heart in the night; I meditate and search my spirit.” 

A series of questions arise.  There’s nothing wrong with questions.  Please don’t ever think we can’t ask questions of God.  Some of the most God-loving people in the Bible asked questions like “How long O Lord?  Will you forget me forever?”  Or how about, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  The thing about rhetorical questions, and we come back to this time and time again, is the way in which we may be led to a deeper understanding of God in posing them and considering them. “Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favourable?  Has his steadfast love (hesed) ceased forever?  Are his promises at an end for all time?  Has God forgotten to be gracious?  Has he in anger shut up his compassion?”  As one commentator puts it, these questions can be summed up in one – “Is the Lord’s rejection final?”

The questions here do not reflect a rejection of God or even a lack of faith.  The questions here reflect a situation in which the singer finds himself, and we can consider how this situation resonates with us currently, how it has resonated in the past, or how it might resonate with us in the future should we ever find ourselves in a similar situation.  Here is the situation: What the singer believes about God does not line up with what the singer is feeling about God or what the singer is experiencing in his or her life.  Circumstances have the Psalmist feeling dismembered/disconnected.  What the singer is recalling of God does not seem to line up with what’s going on around him.  What’s going on around him?  It’s thought that this Psalm was composed for the Israelite community during its time of exile or post-exile, when their situation looked, to put it mildly, bleak. 

We’ve been talking about the Psalms as timeless expressions of faith that don’t get into a lot of historical details.  The idea of a situation that is bleak is, of course, timeless.  Individually, we may be in a situation whose outcome looks bleak.  Collectively, displacement is one of the biggest geo-social-political realities of the 21^st century.  Voluntary or involuntary displacement.  Some of us may have first-hand experience of it.   As people of faith, we may feel displaced or pushed to the margins of society.  How should we react to this?  Do we simply long for the good old days or wax nostalgic?  There are many different answers to this question.  I believe one is that we are called to serve on the margins.  We are also called to remember.

The importance of memory to our faith cannot be overstated.  When we remember, we think the past into the present.  Our circumstances may not change, but who we are is changed.  For the psalmist, the action to take in the face of his questions is to recall with everyone else what God has done.  Remembrance is something that we do individually, and it’s something that we do together.  There is a movement away from the self in this Psalm.  In the first section, remember, remembering was very much self-focused. I commune with my heart in the night.  I meditate and search my spirit.  There’s nothing wrong of course with communing with your heart in the night or meditating and searching your spirit, or considering days of old, or remembering the years of long ago.  God isn’t even being addressed in those verses.  We are called to remember not with a view primarily of ourselves, but of God.

We come back to this time and time again.  Forgive me if I’m repetitive, but I need to be reminded (and surely I can’t be the only one – we’re talking about remembering after all!).  All that we are/have/may become/remember is rooted and grounded in God and God’s nature. Let us acknowledge that often and meaningfully.  My standing with God is not based on what I feel about God or what is going on in my life.  My standing with God is based on God’s love for me and God’s delivering me.  We call it grace, and as someone has said, “All is grace.” 

So, the Psalmist resolves in the face of the question that has been asked to turn to God and to continually remember.  “I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord.  I will remember your wonders of old.  I will meditate on all your work, and muse on your mighty deeds.”  Call to mind, remember, meditate, muse – all verbs of remembering.  But now the object of remembrance is named - the deeds of the LORD, wonders of old, all your work, mighty deeds.  Note too that the movement here is from individual remembrance to collective remembrance.  Look at v 13.  “Your way, O God, is holy.  What God is so great as our God?”  God’s way is holiness.  What does this mean?  One commentator puts it like this – “Holiness is the basic attribute of deity; it is all that contrasts with and transcends the human, the marvellous, the mysterious, the incomprehensible.  In holiness the Lord is incomparable.”  God’s way is holy.  Where did this way lead for the ancient Israelites? 

Through the sea.

The event which the psalmist is recalling along with his faith community is God’s saving acts in bringing the Israelite nation out of Egypt and making a way for them through the Red Sea.  You’ll recall the story.  After the Passover, the Israelites are fleeing.  Pharaoh commands his army to hunt them down and destroy them.  They come up against the Red Sea and it seems all is lost.  God makes a way. This is how God has displayed his might among the peoples.  This is how God redeemed his people with his strong arm, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. 

This event was also marked by a song.  Known as the song of Moses we find it in Exodus 15.  It starts out like this – “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.  The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation;” Later on - “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?  Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendour, doing wonders?”

Calling the past into the present together is vital to our faith.  One writer puts it like this – “The hymn does what praise and confession are meant to do – to represent the God of revelation as the reality and subject of truth in the face of all circumstances and contrary experience.”  Calling the past into the present was a reminder for the Israelites that the God they served was a saving God.  That the God they served was a delivering God, even when their circumstances seemed to indicate otherwise. That the thing to do in the face of these circumstances was to call to mind their saving/delivering God.  To be reminded that their salvation was not to be found in a system or a person or an ideology or a political party or wherever it is that we look for our salvation when things are bleak.

It seems that we need reminding of this, don’t we?  Where do we look for our salvation?  In our competencies?  Talents?  Strength of will?  Experience?  Money? 

When we get together to remember our saving/delivering God, we are reminded that our salvation comes from him alone.  We are coming ever more to realize that our salvation is found in him alone.

This saving event at the Red Sea affected an entire people – the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.  God used people to bring it about.  The brothers.  Moses and Aaron.  The great prophet and the great priest. There was no king yet in those days, but how can the followers of Christ not read this and think of our own prophet and priest and king?  The one who would institute an act whereby we would remember him as the one who saves us?  The act that we will gather around this table to enact in a few moments.

“Do this in remembrance of me,” were Jesus’ words.  There are different aspects to gathering around this table – the unity that is ours as one bread, the sharing in Christ’s death, the looking forward to the heavenly banquet that is to come.  The aspect that we’re focusing on here this morning is remembrance.  Bringing the past into the present.  Bringing God’s great saving act on the cross to mind in the midst of an uncertain present in which God is sometimes perceived as absent.  I was watching a TV show recently in which a character asked “How can you believe in an invisible God?”  The thing is, God made himself visible. When we lift up these visible elements we are reminded of this.

Why do we do this?  We do this because the salvation story is not over.  We do this to remember the divine act that forms the basis –the foundation - of our community of faith.  We do this because of the role that memory plays in our faith. 

Friends, being a follower of Christ is to a large extent an act of memory.  This do in remembrance of me.  In remembrance we call God’s saving acts of the past into the present; the creation of the world; bringing order from chaos; the Exodus; the crossing of the Red Sea; the making of a way through the sea; the making of a way through his Son for all people; a way through the sin that kept us apart from God while Pharaoh’s army was bearing down on us, bringing nothing but death. “O Mary, don’t you weep,” goes one old gospel song, “Didn’t Pharoah’s army get drowned?”  Mary don’t you weep, because deliverance is at hand in the person of our risen Christ.  This is what we remember here today friends.

You led your people like a flock, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.  You led us, you’re leading us, Lord, like a flock, by the hand of your Son our shepherd.  The salvation story is not over.  We await the day of Christ’s return.  We live in this kind of pre-dawn time.  The dark becoming greyer.  The stars slowly disappear.  Looking to Christ, our morning star.  We bring these great saving events to mind as we wait.  I want to note one final thing.  V 19 – “Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen.”  It can be hard to see salvation sometimes.  In the midst of all the things that go on in our world, all the things that go on in our lives, God’s footprints aren’t always seen. 

Yet he’s always making a path.  He’s always bringing us back.  One day we’ll sit around that banquet table which this table also looks forward to.  May he give us hearts in the meantime to seek him.  Hearts to remember him together. May this change us?  God grant that this might be true for us all. Amen

Yet we have a whole category of Psalms, including the one that was read this morning, that has to do with giving thanks to God.  With saying “thank you” to God.  Why should this be?  What might we have to learn about God and about ourselves from Psalm 30?  Let us take a look at our song this morning and see what God may have to say to our hearts.

We’ve been talking about the Psalms as Israel’s prayer book and Israel’s songbook.  At the beginning of this Psalm, we are reminded that this is a song, and we learn where it was sung.  The dedication of the Temple (or the house).  Often there is much we don’t know about a text and we can be ok with not knowing.  Who wrote it?  Does “of David” mean by David or about David or in the style of David?  Is it pointing to an episode in David’s life?  How could it be a Psalm of David for the Temple when the Temple wasn’t built until after David’s death?  Of course, it is entirely possible that David wrote a song in advance.  Which Temple are we talking about?  The first one built by Solomon?  The second Temple, rebuilt after the Babylonian exile?  We do know that this Psalm has long been associated with Hannukah, the 8 days which mark the restoration of worship at the Temple and dedication (or Hannukah) of the Jerusalem Temple by Judas Maccabeus.

“Why am I talking so much about the temple?” you’re asking.  We said three weeks ago that the Psalms are timeless expressions of a turning toward God.  Bearing this in mind, we do well to look at this inscription and ask “What was the temple in Jerusalem and to whom did it point forward?”   The temple was a place of God’s presence.  The temple was a place of mercy and forgiveness.  The temple was a place of communion with God.  Followers of Jesus, of whom does this remind us?  The one who said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it up.”  God with us.  The locus of God’s grace,  The locus of light and life.   

We looked at praise three weeks ago to start this mini-series in the Psalms.  Thanks and praise go together like two things that go very well together.  Like watermelon and feta (try it!).  Thanks and praise. Praise and thanks.  How appropriate that a song of thanks and praise was central to the dedication of a place at which God’s presence, forgiveness, and mercy would be celebrated?  Listen again to the lines.  You have drawn me up.  You have healed me.  You have restored my life.  Central to our relationship with God is our gratitude.  Someone has said that gratitude is the basis of worship.  Worship of God is to be the foundation not only of our gathering together on Sunday mornings, or whenever we gather together, but it is to be the foundation of our very lives because this is how God has made us.  Paul talked about presenting our bodies – our very selves, as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God (made holy in Christ), which is our spiritual worship.  This spiritual worship finds its basis in our giving thanks and praise.

The praise and thanks that is being offered in this Psalm is for a very specific reason – that God is a deliverer.  That God changes things.  That an encounter with God changes things.  That Gos saves us, and let us never take this for granted or get used to it.  That God – redeems us – restores us – reconciles us – all words we use to try and describe what it means to be brought back to God.  It changes our situation.  Look at how the psalmist sets two things in opposition to each other to signify this change throughout the song – I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.  His anger is but for a moment, his favour is for a lifetime.  Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning.  You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.  Let me thank and praise you!

What is the foundational thing that we thank God for?  One thing that applies to everyone who is a follower of Christ?  You have drawn me up.  This imagery is of a bucket being drawn out of the depths of a well.  You’ve thrown me a rope and pulled me up. Rescued me!  You have healed me.  You restored me to life.  “I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me.  O Lord, my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.  O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.”  For the original Psalmist, the praise and thanks here is for recovery from grave illness – illness that was leading to the grave.  To Sheol, to the Pit.  The place of no light, no remembrance, no praise of God, no sound even.  For the Psalmist, thanks and praise is based on God’s saving act – the Psalmist has been saved from the place of death, the place of darkness, of silence.

Jesus was still to come when this song was written, but how can we read these verses and not think of the one who defeated death itself?  I will extol you, O Jesus, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me.  Who are our foes?  The powers of darkness.  The powers of hate and fear and greed and oppression and pride.  If you can say “O Lord my God I cried out to you for help, and you have healed me – you have restored me to life” then the fitting and proper response is praise and thanks.  If you haven’t said this then the invitation is there before you every day.  It’s there before you this day.  This morning.  The invitation is there to join in this song and prayer of praise and thanks. 

Which is what the psalmist does in v 4.  He invites others to join in.  “Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.”  Thanks is something that we do together.  It makes God’s nature known.  It makes God known as a deliverer.  There’s another element to why we’re called to praise and thank God together.  To have any significant experience of life is to know that our awareness of God-with-us ebbs and flows.  Few of us are soaring like eagles all the time as we wait on God.  The Psalms are nothing if not honest about what our lives are like.  As we walk along the Way, we may feel at times like we’re barely able to walk or crawl.  Oftentimes it might seem that we’re still on this Way solely because Jesus is dragging us along!  Get together and sing praises and give thanks to his holy name!  Why?  Because oftentimes we need to be reminded and we need to remind and encourage one another, that God’s anger is not a permanent state.  God’s anger is not an attribute of God – it’s a divine response to sin.  Have you ever felt far from God?  I have.  Have you ever felt that God was hiding his face from you?  I have.  What have I learned from such experiences?  That God doesn’t coerce us.  That God gives us the choice to go it on our own.  That God was waiting.  That God was there the whole time.  We come to know that a moment of God’s anger is nothing compared to a lifetime of God’s favour – of healing, of restoration, of being made whole.

Living in the grace of God, living in the favour of God, does not mean that we won’t suffer.  Every week when we gather together know that there are those among us who are suffering.  We need to be reminded together that suffering is not a permanent condition.  Weeping may linger for the night.  It may linger. It may linger a long time.  Sorrow and lament and suffering, however, do not have the last word. Sorrow and lament and suffering are not living here.  They are only spending the night.  With the morning comes joy. 

We’re learning to pray through the Psalms.  Thanksgiving should always be part of our prayers, whether individually or corporately.  Prayer should not be confined to asking for things from God.  There’s nothing wrong with asking things of God, of course, we call these prayers of supplication or intercession.  The Psalmist prays the foundational asking prayer.  “Hear, O Lord”  Not “hear” as in “Do you hear me?” like some kind of prayerful soundcheck.  “Hear” as in “Save.”  “Hear (save) O Lord, and be gracious to me!  O Lord, be my helper.”  Help not in the sense that I need some assistance with something but help in the sense of “Without your aid God, I am undone!  Ruined!”  God has answered such a prayer, God answers such a prayer, God will answer such a prayer.  It is good and fitting and proper and right for us to answer God’s grace with thanks.  We want to be fully engaged when it comes to God.  Our engagement with God will be less than it should be unless our answer to the saving help we have received is embodied in our praise and thanks to God.  Our relationship to God, individually or together, is not perfected, as someone has said, “except as we learn and say in prayerful praise how the Lord met our neediness with his grace.” 

Prayer changes us, you see.  Prayers of thanksgiving change us.  We talk about spiritual formation – about being formed in the image of Christ or being made like Christ. Engaging often and meaningfully in prayers of thanksgiving to Christ for the grace which has been given us, leaves us open to the Holy Spirit changing us.   

This also involves looking at ourselves honestly.  Examining ourselves.  Confessing.  We leave ourselves open to the Holy Spirit doing this transforming work in us. The Psalmist makes a confession in v 6.  “As for me, I said in my prosperity, ‘I shall never be moved.’”  When things were going well, the Psalmist became complacent.  He forgot that is was by God’s favour that he had been established like a strong mountain.  To praise God and to tell of God’s faithfulness and to give thanks is the right and fitting and proper response to what God has done for us and does for us and one day will do for us.  It’s a recognition that all we have, all we are is of and from God.  That God has created us to live in loving communion with him, with one another, with creation.  That we are unable to do this on our own.  That in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection we who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.  To all this, we cry out “Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me!  O Lord, be my helper!”  What a great prayer.  We should pray that every day.  I know it would change us.

God would change us.  You have turned my mourning into dancing, as the song ends.  You have given me feet to dance and a soul to sing. You have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.  You have given me a whole new set of clothes.  I feel good when I get new clothes!  Paul picks up this image in his letter to the Colossians 3:12–15 “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.  And be thankful.”

Being thankful changes us.  Being thankful leaves ourselves open for the Holy Spirit to do one of the things the Holy Spirit does.  Why should we want this?  So that our souls may praise you and not be silent.  The place of silence was the place of death.   The place of praise and thanksgiving is the place of life and love.  

May we then say confidently and joyfully with the Psalmist – “O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.”  May this be true for us all.

Amen

Make no mistake – there’s something happening here.  It’s good to think about why we’re at a particular place and what’s happening here. We could all very easily be doing something else.  The Psalmist sings about taking time to praise; taking time to remember.  Lives may be so full, schedules may be so full, there is so much that seems to demand our attention, that we barely have time to breathe, much less reflect, remember, praise.  Let’s pray…

“May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be pleasing to you O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.”  Amen

We’ve been in the Psalms for two weeks now and we’ll be in them for two more weeks at least when I’m back from holiday God willing.  The Psalms are a song book.  You don’t need to be an accomplished musician or singer for them to be meaningful.  They are also a prayer book.  The prayer that I just prayed is from the Psalms.  They’re written by multiple people.  Many are known as Psalms of David which could mean by David or about David.  There’s no doubt that King David was heavily involved in music.  His playing soothed Saul after the death of Goliath.  He was known as a great improvisational player on stringed instruments.  He organized the musicians for the temple that would be built after his death.  He wrote songs for them to play too.  There are Psalms that are widely thought to be attributable to David – most notably and famously the 23rd Psalm.

Psalms were written all the way from the time of Moses to the post-exile period of ancient Israel’s history.  Historical details are mostly absent because these song/prayers were meant to be timeless expressions for people whose desire it is to turn toward God.  The Psalms represented prayers that would be appropriate for all of life’s circumstances – its joys and sorrows. 

Praise

This morning we’re talking about praise.  “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” we sing. “Every day I will bless you,” the song goes, “And praise your name for ever and ever.”  It’s important.  How is our praise every day?  Help is at hand.  The idea of praise is contained in the very word for Psalm in Hebrew.  It’s Tehillim.  It means praises.  Psalm 145 kicks off six Psalms of praise that end the Psalms.  It’s the only Psalm that’s introduced as Tehillim – Praise. Of David as it says in our NRSV Bibles.  The Talmud had this to say about this Psalm – “Everyone who repeats the Tehillah of David thrice a day may be sure that he is a child of the world to come.”

Being in the Psalms changes us.  I would expand that statement out to include every Psalm in all of the variety – whether they be prayers of thanksgiving or confidence or praise or lament.  Being in them, praying them, singing them, changes us. 

V1 “I will extol you, my God and King.”  Look at what the Psalmist is saying here.  I will extol you.  I will exalt you.  I will lift you up.  You are worthy O Lord to be lifted up above everything.  Why should we praise God?  You’ll hear people say things like “God must be very needy if God wants us to be praising him all the time.”  Let us not be foolish about this.  Here’s the thing.  God is above all and through all and in all. Let us be reminded in this song of praise.  The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. His compassion is over all he has made, and it is fitting and right and good and proper for us to acknowledge these truths and to offer him our praise.  Every day.  Forever.  To praise God, to tell of who God is - not because God is needy but because God is our delight. 

Living in the generous grace of God is our delight.  Knowing God through the person of his Son and in the power of His Spirit is our delight.  This delight needs to be expressed.   As C.S. Lewis put it “Our delight is incomplete until it is expressed…  It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with.”  To find a cute reel and have no one to share it with.  Sharing images and videos that delight us on our feeds.  Our delight needs to be expressed to be made complete, and our delight in God is made complete in its expression.

Choose

Won’t you choose to do this with me? Let’s choose to praise.  The Psalmist does.  The Psalmist affirms the desire to communicate his delight.  Every day. V2 “Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever.”  There’s a personal aspect to praising God.  A personal aspect to acknowledging that God is above all, or foundational to all.  Why?  Because Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, his greatness is unsearchable.  It’s so unsearchable we can’t even express it.  We use images.  We sing things like “Your love O Lord reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds, your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgements are like the great deep.” His greatness is unsearchable – inexpressible.   But the Psalmist does his best to express it, as do we.  I’ve always loved the line in Charles Wesley’s “And Can It Be That I Should Gain” – In vain the first-born seraph tries, to sound the depths of love divine.  I think there’s a significance to our trying, not matter how meager it may seem.  I think that God shares our delight.

Share

Because praise is meant to be shared.  We see this in the next section.  There’s an individual aspect to praise.  An individual decision to respond to who God is and what God has done is doing and will do.  There’s also a corporate aspect to praise. V4 “One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.”  There’s an evangelical aspect to praise – a telling of good news.  There is a declaration or a proclamation of God’s saving y67acts in praise.  There is an invitation towards other to join in.  “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together.” Ps 34:3  “Come let us worship and bow down,” Psalm 95.  Let us praise God together.  Both individual and corporate aspects are shown here – V5b-7 “On your wondrous words I will meditate.  I will declare your greatness.  They shall celebrate the fame of your abundant goodness, and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.”

Our praise of God is not only to delight in God’s greatness, but to delight in and make known God’s goodness.  God is good.  May we never become blasé about God’s goodness or fail to acknowledge it.  May we never fail to wonder at God’s goodness.  May it ever more come to have a deeper meaning for us friends.  What would it mean for us to believe that God is good?  How might we be called and enabled by God to reflect God’s goodness? 

In praising God we leave ourselves open to being changed by the one we’re praising.  In meditating on God’s wondrous works.  V8 “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”  These lines echo all over scripture.  Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.  Surely goodness and mercy (steadfast love, lovingkindness) will follow me all the days of my life.  V9 “The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.”  What would it mean for us to believe that?  For us to take hold of that in the depths of our being?  How would it cause us to see people?  How would it cause us to see creation?

All

Creation is involved in this too.  We’ve talked about praising God individually.  Praising God together.  Things then expand ever further out.  V11 “All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord.”  In praising God we’re joining in with something that all creation will do one day.  We get glimpses of it now too don’t we?  Creation speaking of the glory of God’s kingdom.  They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom. V13 “Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations.”  This thing we’re part of is enduring!  We get the idea of this enduring kingdom by singing and reciting the Psalms don’t we?  Not long ago I was singing Psalm 23, known as a Psalm of David.  Of course it had stuck me before that here was a guy named David singing a Psalm of David on a stringed instrument.  It struck me in a new way though this day.  Thinking about singing the same words some 3,000 years later.  Thinking about what they meant to the king, what they have meant for people over thousands of years, what they mean for us today.  Our praising reflects and looks forward to and joins the heavenly praise that we hear about all over the book of Revelation – all part of God kingdom which will have no end. 

What does God’s greatness and goodness look like?  This unsearchable, indescribable, greatness and goodness that go together?  There’s a list that starts at v 14.   He upholds.  “The Lord upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down.”  He provides. V15 “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.  You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.”  He’s close.  He’s with us.  V18-19  “The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.  He fulfills the desire of all who fear him; he also hears their cry, and saves them.”  He watches over.  V20 “The Lord watches over all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.”  If that last part sounds too judgey, we remember that God is just.  He won’t let injustice stand forever.  He calls us to act against injustice too.  He enables us to be part of his setting things right as we look forward to the day when all things will be made right.

Praise

In the meantime, we praise.  Like the Psalmist we begin and end with praise.  The Psalmist ends by restating the intention he started with. V21 “My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord…”   Why?  Because it is right and good and fitting that we should continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of lips that confess his name.  Music is not so much everyone’s thing I know.  We’re going to leave some of these at the door – whether you use it as a bookmark or pin it somewhere. “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.” Let praise of God run through our days.     

This is the praise in which we are invited to join.  May this be an invitation we all accept. May our praise of God change us and cause the God’s Kingdom to be known.  God grant that these things may be true for us.

Amen

Is God worthy of our love, worship, adoration, attention no matter what the circumstances?

Why are the righteous pious?  Do we follow Christ because of what’s in it for us?

Where is meaning to be found?  What is the thing worth making the foundation of our lives?  No matter what is going on.  And what does that look like? 

In our story this morning, we’re given a look at what it looks like to be founded in God, in Christ, in the Spirit.  We’re given a look at what it looks like to live in the downpour of God’s generous grace.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we look at the last chapter of Job.

As we come to the end of the story, we find Job giving his answer. Through the story we’ve found that some of the most profound and meaningful moments have come in silences and so we often find the same thing in our lives.  The sound of silence as someone once put it.  There comes a time though for Job to speak. The thing is the patience of Job which we are invited into is not simply patience for patience’s sake.  The questions that have been asked demand a response and if we’ve stuck around for these 8 weeks it’s time to give one. Job’s response is one of confession.  Now when we hear confession we often think of it in terms of acknowledging the wrongs one has done, whether we’re talking about a criminal confessing or church confession (whether individually or the kind of communal confessing).   To go back to the original meaning of confess, it means to acknowledge with, or avow with or declare with. 

Job is saying to God I declare with you.  Job is using God’s words here to signify this declaring with, to signify his agreement with.  “Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?”  “Hear and I will speak; I will question you and you will declare to me.”  Now Job is declaring.  There is a significance in declaring.

There is something important in the act of declaring.  Someone has put it like this – “Where there is the sort of deep agreement between people that comes to expression in common speech… then much that is deeply difficult in experience can be borne and gone through together.”  This is why we declare things together.  We pray the prayer that Jesus taught together, signalling our assent, our amen.  It is not for nothing that Paul wrote to the Christians at Rome that following Christ was not some sort of purely private affair (Rom 10:9)  It’s not simply something that’s for me and it’s very private and I don’t like to talk about it.  He told them rather that being saved in Christ, being delivered from that torrent in Christ involved believing in one’s heart and confessing with one’s mouth.

“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you”, declares Job.  “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know.”   Job’s experience has led him to realize that there are things beyond his understanding.  Job has come to a deeper understanding regarding his need for someone beyond himself.

This is a key thing, recognizing the need for someone beyond ourselves. 

A story has been told about a man who was visiting an aquarium one day.  All of a sudden there was a power failure.  All the lights went out.  The entire place was in pitch darkness.  The man felt a hand reach for his and hold it.  It was a small child.  He bent down a little and said “Who do you belong to?”  The answer came back, “You until the lights come back on.”

Little children know their need for someone beyond themselves.  Who do you belong to?  Not just for when the lights go out but for when days are sunny or for when God is speaking from the storm.  “I know that you can do all things,” Job says and this line might also be translated “You know that you can do all things” because to say “You know” is to ground one’s trust outside of ourselves and our knowing outside of our own knowing.  “You know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”  “Hear and I will speak, I will question you and you will declare to me” God had said. Here we have Job declaring, “I had heard of you before by the hearing of my ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”  Not a repenting in terms of a turning toward God but a change in Job’s way of thinking.  Despising not in terms of self-abasement or self-denigration but in recognition that his words had been insufficient – that Job spoke of things he didn’t understand.  A new way of thinking about being made in the divine image and at the time living as fragile beings subjected to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the vicissitudes of life.  A pledging of allegiance to God who creates and restrains and maintains and loves and who is worthy of all our love back even when we do not know the answers.

No easy answers have been given throughout our story and we shouldn’t expect them now.  The restoration of Job’s fortunes is not simply a getting what he deserves because he’s been faithful to God throughout.  It’s not simply a making up of accounts in the divine ledger for what Job has lost.  It’s never been about reward/punishment and it’s not now.

What is it then?  We want to make sure we are getting this right.  We see in this section of the story that God has a concern for truth.  We read that God’s wrath has been kindled against Job’s friends.  This is not because God is needy and wants sacrifice to soothe His ego.  It is rather that God has a concern for truth.  What is the truth?  What is the answer to the question “What is a good and fitting and proper response on our part to the generous and unexpected acts of God?

We’ve talked about the creative acts of God.  The creative, maintaining, restraining acts of God.  Someone has said that God creating in the first place, in the creation story in Genesis, out of nothing, is a kind of non sequitur.  It doesn’t follow from anything.  There is no cause and effect involved in God creating.  God creating in the first place is an outflowing of the love and generosity that has existed among the three persons of the Trinity from before the foundations of the world.   The Psalmist sang of God’s generosity – “You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.” (Ps 145:16)  The generous acts of God turn everything upside down.  The generous acts of God turn conventional wisdom upside down.  The generous act of God in Christ’s birth and death and resurrection and promised return means that the proud have been scattered in the thought of their hearts, the powerful are brought down from their thrones, the lowly are lifted up, the hungry are filled with good things while the rich are sent away empty.  Conventional wisdom is turned upside down.  Someone once said of some of the first followers of Christ that they were turning the world upside down!

Which of course means right side up.  This is what we are invited to confess along with Job.  It means that it’s not going to be conventional wisdom like “Those who make the gold make the rules” or “I will give you the same respect you give me” or “Look out for yourself above all” or …. that will rule the day.  This is the right-side-up world in Christ that we are invited into on a daily basis.  What are we going to do with this?  This is the question that has been before us from the beginning.  We are involved in the answer to the question that is posed in the heavenly council.  We’re involved in answering those questions posed by Jesus –“Who do you say that I am?”  “When the Son of Man returns will he find faith on the earth?”  “Are you able to drink this cup?” 

We’re involved in the answer and one of the things about God is, God is humble enough to allow us to reject him. That’s right, the answer is never a given.  God extends the invitation to Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar.   Put away your thinking on reward and punishment and go and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering and Job will pray for you.  They don’t have to comply.  They could just as easily have rejected this God who didn’t fit into the way they believed God should act.  Job didn’t have to offer up a prayer for them.  If he was in that reward/punishment mode he could just as easily have said “I’m not going to pray for these three who just spent two hours accusing me and my family and insulting me!”

Which reminds us of the one who said “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”  Everything is upside down.  How could any of this make any sense? Because in Christ we didn’t get what we deserved.  This is grace.  We couldn’t earn it.  We don’t deserve it, yet God’s grace is extended to us in the person of Christ Jesus in God’s wondrous generous love and like Job, we react in awe and wonder and praise and worship.

They went and did what the Lord told them.  Job prayed.  They are all caught up in God’s creating, sustaining, restraining, generous action.

Not because anyone has to do anything.  Someone has described Job’s actions in this chapter as a free act of self-offering to God in a stance of openness and vulnerable hope.  “The friends do not have to repent, but may.  Job does not have to intercede, but may.  Yahweh does not have to forgive, but may.”  It doesn’t mean we are given or have all the answers.  To participate freely in these acts of generous grace means healing and restoration and change.  “If these actions do occur, the outcome will be a restored and enriched world, in which evil has been fully acknowledged by all parties, and yet overcome through acts of freedom in which Yahweh, Job and his friends all participate.”

Because faith was never meant to be a private affair.  What’s the first thing Matthew did after meeting Jesus? He threw a party and invited all his friends to meet Jesus (speaking of creative acts of generosity).  What did the shepherd do when he found his 100^th sheep?  He invited his friends and neighbours to celebrate! 

Job’s prayer for his friends was not a result of fortunes being restored and we mustn’t think that fortunes being restored are a result of our piety.  Entering into God’s generous acts of grace creates a sort of upward spiral of generosity.  To follow Christ is to know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who though he was rich yet for your sake became poor.  It’s to enter into a constant outpouring and infilling of God’s grace.  It’s not about material reward here any more than it was about material punishment through this story.  We have this wonderful sequence of events here from verse 10 on.  Job’s fortunes are restored.  Job’s brothers and sisters and friends come to his house and eat and show him sympathy (and don’t think the grief ever went away) and supported him with gifts.  The Lord blessed Job and he has 7 sons and 3 daughters who are named here – Keziah, Jemimah, Keren-happuch.  They are beautiful and stepping into God’s generosity is beautiful and they are given an inheritance because that is a just and open-handed thing.

After this Job lived one hundred and forty years and saw his children, and his children’s children, four generations.  And Job died, old and full of days.

The way of God is restoration.  The way of God is healing.  The way of God is wholeness.  The way of God is life.  It starts with a confession, an agreement spoken aloud.  It leads to participation in the generous grace of God which affects all of life.  How will we be called in the coming season to take part creatively in the generous grace of God?  May God give us the hearts to discern, the will to follow, and the courage to act in response to the generous grace we have been given in Christ Jesus.  May the Spirit of God grant that these things may be true for all of us. Amen

Not so here.  In the book of Job, God shows up.  The way we feel about God is going to determine the way we feel about the way that God shows up here.  George Bernard Shaw said this – “If I complain that I am suffering unjustly, it is no answer to say, ‘Can you make a hippopotamus?’”  (Some people think the reference to the Behemoth in ch 40 is about a hippo) This passage has been interpreted in as many ways as people see God.  We may come to this passage and find it a little disappointing.  We were expecting answers to certain questions about suffering!  We come to it confessionally.  We come to it, in other words, bringing what we believe about God.  Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zappfe describes God’s appearance and words like this: “(Job) finds himself confronted with a ruler of grotesque primitiveness, a cosmic cave-dweller, a braggart and blusterer… What is new for Job is not God’s greatness in quantifiable terms; that he knew fully in advance… What is new is the qualitative baseness.”

To which I would say this: The God revealed in scripture, the God revealed in the person of Christ, the God revealed in the person of the Holy Spirit – God With Us – is neither a braggart nor a blusterer nor base.  Of this I am sure.

Two things of which we can be sure – one is that God’s speaking will not support “conventional wisdom” – we’ve already seen that in the speeches of Job’s friends and Elihu.  The second is that when all is said and done, we will have a place to stand.

Where do we stand as we read God’s words?  “Where do we stand?”  is really the existential question of our lives.  On what or whom do we stand?  For the follower of Christ – “Do you still persist in your love and adoration and attention and praise and trust in God, no matter what is going on?”

On what or whom do we stand?  What we believe will colour how we see chapters 38 to 41 of Job’s story.  But we still need a place to stand.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we seek a place to stand together.

I have always been a fan of and often a customer of Italian barbers.  I have appreciated the wisdom and advice I’ve picked up from a very young age listening in barber shops.  Some years ago my barber was Joe, near where I worked at Bay and Wellesley.  On one visit Joe was gone but his partner was taking care of things.  I found out from Joe’s partner that Joe’s wife, who had been living at Villa Colombo nursing home, had died.  The next visit Joe was back.  “Joe I was so sorry to hear about your wife,” I told him.  His reply was “What are you going to do? You keep going.”  I nodded mutely.  At the time I took this as a manifestation of a kind of stoicism that goes back to Roman times.  One must control one’s response to situations in life with courage and temperance. This is what I like to think about in barber shops.  I’ve since come to think that this kind of question is an actual question.  What are you going to do?  What are you doing to do in the face of loss?  What are you going to do in the face of the loss of a spouse – known as the hardest loss one can endure?

We’ve spoken from the beginning of this series about the power of rhetorical questions.  Questions that can lead us into a deeper understanding of God, ourselves, the world.  We’ve said that the question that has underlined the whole story is “Is God worthy of our love and adoration and praise and trust no matter what our circumstances?”  To expect God to answer questions about why the innocent suffer or where the justice is in innocent suffering is to do the text a disservice.  It’s also, I believe, to do God a disservice.

It doesn’t mean we don’t have questions or doubts.  Of course not.  Often we think we come to church or a person of faith or a religious professional to have our questions answered.  Equally and possibly more important are the questions that are asked of us.  It’s a famous rabbinical teaching technique.  Jesus did it all the time.  The teacher does not so much give you the answers as ask the right questions so that you may answer them.

What we have here is God asking Job questions.  I do not read this as God bragging or asking questions that Job will find impossible to answer.  “Where were you when I…” not in the sense that we might say to someone “If you think you could have done a better job than be my guest!”  I don’t believe that Jesus asked his followers “Are you able to drink the cup that I am going to drink?” in order to brag and show off and say “Hey I’m the Son of God! I’m the only one who can do this!  Do you think you can stand in for me or something?  Outta my way!”

I don’t think Jesus was asking that to brag and I don’t think God is bragging here.  God is asking questions in order to bring Job and us to a deeper understanding of three questions – Who are you?  Where were you?  Are you able?

The thing about this situation that Job finds himself in here is the same about the situation that we tend to find ourselves in when we face suffering.  We find ourselves at the limit of our own abilities and know-how.  We find ourselves unable to extricate ourselves from a dire situation.  We go from sunshine to something else and God speaks to us.  God speaks to us in silence yes.  God spoke to Elijah not in the wind and not in the earthquake and not in the fire, but in the stillness.  Here God speaks from the storm.

This is what God does in the middle of the storm.  We are not left alone. God speaks.  The one on whom we have been waiting, speaks.

When sunny days become a whirlwind, it tends to focus things.  Matters tend to get distilled to their essence.  We’ve been talking about this since the beginning of June.  Getting to the essence of things.  When we are confronted with a whirlwind – our own finitude, our own mortality – it tends to take us to the essence of things.  I was in a dental office not long ago considering my own mortality (because this is what I like to do at the dentist).  They took me to another room to do a 3D scan of my whole mouth/jaw area.  When the scan was over and I was back in the dental chair, the screen on my left showed the image along with a skull in the upper right-hand corner.  I thought it was my own skull!  I thought “Well isn’t that way to be confronted by your own mortality.”  I turned out it was a generic skull in the end anyway, but the point was made.

There’s a story I want to share which shows the kind of thing I’m talking about.  It’s long but I think worthwhile.  It’s from a book called The Inward Morning by a US philosopher called Henry Bugbee.  Nice summertime story:  “It was in the summertime, at a summer resort, along the North Fork of the Trinity River in California, on a day, like so many summer days of bright sun streaming through the tops of pines.  Most of the length and breadth of that long, smooth, flowing pool lay translucently exposed to the bouldered bottom.  Children played on the sandy shores or splashed along the fringes of the pool.  The air was of ambient fragrance of pines, reassuring warmth and stillness, refreshing coolness of moving water…

There came a cry for help, seconded with a cry of fright, and I turned toward the tail of the pool just in time to see a young man desperately, failingly, clinging to a great log which had been chained as a boom across the lower end (to raise the water level in the pool).  No one could reach him in time. An enormous suction from under the log had a firm hold of the greater part of his body and drew him… under.  He bobbed to the surface of the first great wave of the rapid below, but there was no swimming or gaining the bottom to stay what seemed an impending execution on the rocks…some hundred yards down. But it chanced that the river was abnormally high, and as it carried this helpless man doomward it swept him just for a moment under the extremity of a willow which arched far out from the bank… With a wild clutch, the young man seized a gathering of the … branches and held.  Everything held… He had barely the strength and the breath to claw himself up the muddy slope onto firmament.

I had run across the log and arrived on the opposite side below the willow, where he now paused, panting and on all fours, unable to rise.  Slowly he raised his head and we looked into each other’s eyes. I lifted out both hands and helped him to his feet.  Not a word passed between us. As nearly as I can relive the matter, the compassion that I felt with this man gave way into awe and respect for what I witnessed in him.  He seemed absolutely clean.  In that steady gaze of his, I met reality point blank, filtered and distilled as the purity of a man.”

Meeting reality point blank.  Getting to the essence of everything.  No words passed between them. Is it any wonder that Job tells God here “I lay my hand on my mouth.” 40:4  He has gone back to silence in the face of the whirlwind.  The river you see doesn’t care about the morality of its actions.  The river has no time for moral philosophy. When you’re swept up in the river it is not the time for endless arguments about cause and effect and theodicy and how can a just God be righteous or why does this happen or that not happen or of us putting our own ideas about suffering and justice on God in our great wisdom.

It's time for questions and the questions are asked of us.

Questions like those that are laid out here.  Questions that are there to lead us into a deeper relationship with God.  Not belittling at all but affirming.  Who are you?  “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” asks God.  Who am I?  It’s the same question that Moses asked himself about himself when he met Yahweh at the bush that burned but was not consumed.  “Who am I that I should go to Pharoah and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”  It’s not just about modesty.  Who am I?  Who are you?  We’re talking about the essence here.  It’s the same question that the Psalmist asked in a broader sense – “What is humanity that you are mindful of them?”  God’s talk of creation points to the answer!  I am a creation of the living God who made me in His image! “ Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” asks God.  Not in the sense of “I didn’t see you doing this or helping me!' or 'Who do you think you are?' but in the sense of “Do we know the answer to this question?”  Where were you?  Where was I?  I was chosen by God “…in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love, destined for adoption as his child through Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, that he freely bestowed upon us in the Beloved.” (Eph 1:4-6)

That’s who I am!  That’s where I was.  “Gird up your loins,” says God.  Get ready.  Get ready for action, for movement.  Get ready to give an answer.  Lace your boots up and get ready to stand like a man or woman or child who has been created by God.  Pray to God to help you to live into this identity because that is who we were created to be!  Let us remember who we are and let us remember who God is.  Let us sing praise to God just like the morning stars that sang together and the heavenly beings who shouted for joy. (38:7)  Let us join them in praising our loving God who is over all and through all and in all and who both restrains and sustains – “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb – when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band., and prescribed bars for it, and set bars and doors and said ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’.”  God made it, God restrains it and God sustains it.

Isn’t that wonderful?  I like to say I have a healthy respect for the power of the sea and I don’t even have any experience of it!  There are things more powerful than we are but not more powerful than God.  “My God is so big, so strong and so mighty, there’s nothing my God cannot do,” we sang as children.  It seems we are made to recognize powers beyond ours.  When we’re children it’s often our parents that we think of as invincible.  Life sadly disabuses us of that notion.  We have notions though, of care and justice and rightness because we are created in God’s image.  We are also created, of course, and it does not do to place our own preconceived notions of such things on God.  This is a call to trust.  To trust God who looks after the mountain goats and the deer as they have their fauns (and how does that even happen out there in the wild but you know God and you look after them) and to trust in God who looks after the wild donkey so far away from the tumult of the city (and how are those wild donkeys even ok?)  and gives it the steppe for a home and who…

Clothes the lilies of the field in splendour.  And who is aware even of the sparrow falling.

Are you willing to trust this creating, nurturing, sustaining God?  This God who came among us and talked about the lilies and the sparrows.  This God whose eye is on even the little sparrow and whose limits mean that injustice will not rule the day. This God who will one day make all things right in the justice of God. Are you able to trust this God?

This is our invitation.  The last question we’ll talk about this morning.  Are you able?  Are you able to trust in God who doesn’t provide easy answers and sometimes doesn’t provide any answer?  God has provided us with a willow branch to grasp onto.   A prophet once told of a shoot that would come from the stump of Jesse.  Not so much a branch but an arm with an open hand, held out to us, to which we could cling and that would cling to us and draw us up out of the torrent and onto solid ground.    A place to stand.  A foundation.

Christ Jesus.   A foundation who asks his followers who wonder about greatness and who will be considered great in his kingdom – “Are you able to drink the cup?”  Not in a way that suggests bragging or belittling, but an actual choice that is laid before us.

Are you able?  To drink this cup is to recognize that while suffering cannot be explained, we are led by a suffering Saviour who brings life even from death.  To recognize that the way of God, the way of greatness is the way of self-giving love.  Are you able to be led by such a Saviour?

Who are you?  A beloved child of God.  May God help us to recognize this and live into this.  Where were you?  Chosen by God from the foundations of the world to be holy and blameless not in ourselves, but before him in love, adopted as His children.  May God help us to accept our royal identity in Christ.  Are you able?   God grant that for each and every one of us, the answer might be a grateful and loving “Yes.”  May this be true for us all. Amen

Bad religion.  We said very early on in this series that we need to be very careful about who we call the Satan’s accomplice or the devil’s instrument.  We must also look with great care at anyone (including ourselves) who claims to speak for God.  Such a person or persons, or their words at least, might not be all that they claim.

When we get to Job 32 the speeches have ended.  Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar.   Three cycles of going through these speeches where Job’s friends are putting forth a principle that they believe explains Job’s troubles – someone has sinned here and these are the consequences.  Whether it is Job himself or his children.  It’s a cause-and-effect view of the world that wraps everything up nicely and explains everything nicely.  Job has hung on to his integrity (he has not cursed God), and has been calling out to hear God’s voice, to meet God.  He cannot understand how God’s justice and his own uprightness can be reconciled.  Last week we heard a “hymn to wisdom” in chapter 28.  Remember, “And he said to humanity, ‘Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to turn away from evil is understanding.’” (Job 28:28)  Job then makes a final speech in which he cries out to hear from God “O that I had one to hear me!  Here is my signature!  Let the Almighty answer me!)” (Job 31:35a)   “The words of Job are ended” is how chapter 31 ends.  We’re once more where we began back in chapter 2 – everyone sitting in silence. 

From seemingly out of nowhere Elihu strides onto the scene.  He’s not mentioned anywhere else.  He’s not mentioned in the epilogue.  He’s not mentioned in the lines where God will pardon Job’s three friends.  He comes onto the stage like a young prophet, claiming divine inspiration.  No problem right? Except we have to be careful about claims to divine inspiration.  The question here is not so much do we believe God or not, but rather “What is the authentic word of God?”

Let’s ask for God’s help as we look at the speech of young Elihu this morning.

There has been much irony throughout this book and it continues here with the coming on the scene of Elihu.  “Let me set you straight,” says Elihu.  He’s angry.  Elihu does not base what he’s saying on experience or the wisdom of years.  “I said let days speak and many years teach wisdom,” he says (32:7).  He goes on to claim divine inspiration – “But truly it is spirit in a mortal, the breath of the Almighty, that makes for understanding.” (32:8)  Elihu will claim to be perfect in knowledge, “For truly my words are not false; one who is perfect in knowledge is with you.” (36:4)  The problem is that these words are undercut in many ways.  They’re undercut by Job’s own words about having the spirit of God being in him – “as long as my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils” (27:3).  They’re undercut by the voice of God that will come right after, actually serving as a kind of interruption – “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (38:2)

So many words, so many words.  Elihu says some good things, just as Job’s friends do.  Largely he repeats what has already been said.  He promises Job’s friends “I will not answer with your speeches” (32:14).  Elihu then goes on to say things like “For according to their deeds he will repay them, and according to their ways he will make it befall them.” (34:11). Once again, we get what we deserve.  What goes around comes around.  Elihu is angry and on the attack. “Job opens his mouth in empty talk, multiplies words without knowledge.” (35:16)

Look at 35:6-8.  Here Elihu is repeating an earlier denial by Eliphaz that anything we do could make any difference to God.  “Can a mortal be of use to God?  Can even the wisest be of service to him?  Is it any pleasure to the Almighty if you are righteous, or is it gain to him if you make your ways blameless?” (22:2-4)  It can be quite a common view of the divine.  God, if God exists, sits up there aloof and above all our petty troubles and squabbling and questions.  We have said from the beginning that the book of Job shows us that God has quite a big stake in our response to him. That the question of “Is God worthy of our love in any circumstance” is one posed by the heavenly council and it’s one in which we are involved in determining the answer.  God involves us. 

Christ involves us when he asks questions like “Who do you say that I am?” or “Do you want to be made well?” or “When the Son of Man returns will he find any faith on earth?”  Jesus speaks of great joy in heaven over one who was lost that is found.  There is a great line in Zephaniah 3 which speaks of rescue and restoration – “he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.” (Zeph 3:17b-18a) An aside - Any claims to divine inspiration and speaking for the divine must be weighed and tested.  They must be tested against the divine Word of God.  They must be weighed against our consciences with the help of the Holy Spirit.  We do this together.  We read about the first church council in Acts 15, known as the Jerusalem Council.  The early church was trying to discern God’s will for the inclusion of those outside Judaism into the church.  At the end of it they write a letter and say, “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” (Acts 15:28) Let us be people who are able to say the same thing as we seek to know God’s will together.  We have seen what damage can be done when groups of people claim divine inspiration to know things like, for example, that political leaders have been sent by God.  Let us test and weigh such claims.  We are continually wanting to know God’s will in our lives and in the life of his church here in North Toronto.  May we be doing this together and asking for the Spirit’s help and guidance and testing and weighing things with the Spirit’s help and experience and a growing knowledge of God together.  Always being reminded of what I like to call God’s Big Will for each of us.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and you neighbour as yourself.  What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?

God is not sitting anywhere aloof or distant.  God is as close as our breath. 

You may be asking at this point “Well why is Elihu in here at all?”  Many people believe this section to be a later addition to Job.  Why not just skip from Job’s speech in ch 31 to God’s voice in ch 38? Elihu does not simply repeat arguments already made.  He furthers them.  In this way, he acts like the Accuser. Remember how, when we started, we heard the Accuser say to God – “Take from Job everything he has and he will curse to your face.”  Recall how this didn’t happen.  Rather than saying something like “Well I guess I was wrong there – well done Job!”, the Accuser doubles down on his theory.  Sure that was fine when we were talking about his children and his possession, but skin for skin, a person will give everything they have to save their own life.

The Accuser has from the beginning been espousing a cause-and-effect view of God and of life.   It’s known as behaviourism.  A behaviourist view that says that our responses are conditioned by stimuli.  Good stimuli equals good response, and bad stimuli equals bad response.  This is the type of view with which we can wrongly characterize our relationship with God. The Accuser said, “Take away everything he has and he will curse you to your face.” Bad stimulus will bring bad response.  Job’s three friends take the same view.  Job is suffering because God is punishing him.  Bad stimuli from Job equals bad response from God.  God dispenses rewards and punishments here and now based on what we deserve.   Elihu repeats the same thing – “For according to their deeds he (God) will repay them, and according to their ways he will make it befall them.” (34:11)

See what I mean about bad religion? It’s like someone saying that faith or religion is a mere opiate.  Something we use to dull ourselves.  At which point I say when you consider all the ways around us in which people dull themselves, is this really the conversation you want to have?  We go wrong in thinking that we get what we deserve from God, when grace tells us that in the loving mercy of God we get what we don’t deserve.

The Accuser was proven wrong in his theory.  He doubled down and said “Well if he loses his good health he’ll surely curse God.”  He’s again proven wrong as Job has not turned away from God.

In much the same way, Elihu doubles down.  Elihu not only looks to the past to explain suffering, but he looks to the future.  Job’s suffering is not simply about sins one has committed, but it’s a means which God is using to bring Job back to him.  Suffering not only punishes, it educates.”  We hear this in 33:19 “They are also chastened with pain upon their beds, and with continual strife in their bones.”  Why?  “God indeed does all these things, twice, three times with mortals, to bring back their souls from the Pit, so that they may see the light of life.” (33:29-30)

So come on back Job!  God’s doing this for your own good!

You see what I mean about bad religion.   God forbid we ever say or infer such a thing.  We’ve said before that sure you can make some kind of connection often from sin to suffering.  We know that oftentimes, destructive behaviour brings destruction. What we mustn’t ever do it try to make a connection from suffering to sin, particularly when we’re thinking that God is bringing suffering in order to bring us closer to him.  Of course, that can happen and of course, we know that God can bring good out of the worst suffering, even suffering unto death.  We live in the shadow of the cross after all.  But let’s not play like we know God’s motivations.

To follow Christ is not so much to question whether or not we obey God, but rather to discern which voice is the voice of God.  No matter how pious, how prayerful, how faithful we are, we wonder.  No less a figure than Jeremiah could say “Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of Israel.” (Jer 2:4)  At the same time he would pray to God “Why is my pain increasing, my wounds incurable refusing to be healed?  Truly, you are to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fall.” (Jer 15:18) Because no one is ever simply one thing.

Elihu’s appearance here has been described as spectral or ghostlike.  He comes out of nowhere and disappears back into nowhere.  Can’t these kind of questions appear before us in the same way?  What did I do to deserve this God?  I must have done something.  Are you using these trials to bring me back to you?  Have I strayed unknowingly?  In this way we become our own accuser in a way. 

From within or from without, we may hear voices telling us that God is too far above humanity to care about us; telling us that we have done something to deserve this; or that God must be doing this to us for some reason.  Looking for answers, looking for reasons.  In the face of this and as we come to the Lord’s table today, let us remember what it means to live in the grace of God. To live in the grace of God is to trust God for his grace, his mercy, his compassion, his justice.  This doesn’t mean we’re given answers to all our questions.  Let us remember the words of Paul to the church in Corinth.  “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” (2 Cor 4:8-10)  In the face of all his perplexity, Job is holding fast.  Job is waiting to hear from God, which we will all do next week.  The stage is set.  In the meantime, and all the time, let us pray for guidance that we might know, as we listen for God’s voice, God’s good and pleasing and perfect will.  It’s not something that we’re called to do on our own.  Let us continue to seek and to hear together.  Amen  

At the same time, we’re considering the question “Where is wisdom to be found, and where is the place of understanding?”

How then should we live?

Particularly in the face of suffering.  This is the story.  Job has lost his possessions, his great wealth.  Job has lost 10 children.  Job has lost his good health.  He’s asking “Why?”  He’s crying out, “Why?” really.  This is his situation and we do well by not turning our faces away from him.  Someone has said that it’s good for the family of God to be preparing ourselves for suffering before it comes.  It is good for us to be prepared for when suffering and loss comes.  Suffering and loss are going to come.  We may be in the middle of suffering and loss right now.  We need to be preparing one another to know what it means to put our hand in the hand of the one who stilled the water when it’s dark and God’s hand is hard to see and we’re saying “Where are you in this God?” We’re not supposed to ask those questions or look for His hand on our own.  So here we are.  I was talking to Nicole about this whole Job thing recently and I said that it’s good, maybe, for us to be looking at this story in the sunny days of June and July rather than the short dark grey days of January/February and Blue Monday and all that kind of January/February thing in our part of the world.  Taking a look at our Sunday folder from a couple of weeks ago brought home the truth about living between joy and sorry or hope and despair.  On the front cover is a picture of lamenting despairing Job.  On the inside page “Church Picnic June 23^rd!” with a nice red gingham tablecloth! 

Are these two images incompatible?  Is God worthy of our love/praise/trust no matter what?  Maybe at this point we should be saying “Well that depends on what God is like I suppose.”  So what is God like?  Do we not want wisdom on this question of what God is like?  Do we not want a deeper understanding of what God is like?  Let’s come to God now and ask for help as we look at some of the conversation between Job and his friends.   Let us pray.

We left Job with his friends’ silence.  Job could not remain silent and so we have chapter 3, which ended like this, “I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes.” (3:26)  From chapters 4 through to 27 we have three cycles of conversation which go Eliphaz/Job, Bildad/Job, Zophar/Job.  Three times.  The talk starts out fairly polite.  “If one ventures a word with you, will you be offended?” says Eliphaz.  “See you have instructed many; you have strengthened the weak hands. Your words have supported those who were stumbling, and you have made firm the feeble knees.” (4:3-4)  Let us do the same for you now Job!  Things will go downhill.  “If your children sinned against him, he delivered them into the power of their transgression,” from Bildad.  (8:4)  If your children were killed, they brought it on themselves.  Job becomes fed up.  “… miserable comforters are you all.  Have windy words on limit?  Or what provokes you that you keep on talking?” (16:2-3)  Why are you still talking?  They’re fed up listening to Job, “How long will you hunt for words?” asks Bildad (18:2).  This is all poetry remember. 

What it all comes down to is this.  Job’s friends maintain that he has done something to deserve what happened to him.  Job maintains that he hasn’t and wonders about the God’s justice.

The thing about the words that Job hears from his friends.  There is some truth in them.  “As for me I would seek God, and to God I would commit my cause.  He does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number.” (5:9)  “How happy is the one whom God reproves, therefore do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.” (5:17)  The problem is that they are saying that they know that Job has brought his situation on himself.  Someone has described their position like this:  1)  God is absolutely in control  2)  God is absolutely just and fair  3)  Therefore God always blesses righteousness and punishes wickedness (soon and certainly in this life)  4)  Therefore if I suffer I must have sinned and am being punished justly for my sin.

I have heard this kind of thinking from Christian leaders all my life.  AIDS is a punishment from God.  COVID 19 is a punishment from God.  Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was a punishment from God on the city of New Orleans (and I suppose the surrounding area too?).  The earthquake in Haiti in 2010 was a punishment from God because of occult practices. So they got what they deserved.  So what goes around comes around when it comes to God.

It's the kind of thinking that makes us say “What have I done to deserve this?”  I don’t have a lot of personal experience with this I must say.  I remember once reading a story from a man called James Bryant Smith who wrote a series of books on spiritual formation.  This one is called The Good and Beautiful God.  Smith and his wife were going to have a baby, and were told by doctors that the little girl his wife had been carrying for 8 months had a rare chromosomal disorder which would likely cause her to die at birth.  Smith writes “Up to that point in my life nothing terrible had happened to me.  Now I was faced with one of life’s worst problems – dealing with the coming death of a child.  How does on survive this kind of news?  How do you move from painting your child’s nursery to planning her funeral?  How does a Christian, one who believes in the goodness of God, respond to something so tragic and heartbreaking?”  Their daughter Madeline was born and lived just over two years.  During this time, Smith tells of going to lunch with a pastor friend.  “One day a pastor I had known for years took me to lunch in an effort to comfort me.  While I was in the middle of eating my salad he asked, “Who sinned Jim, you or your wife?”  I said, “Excuse me…. what do you mean?”  He said, “Well, one or both of you must have sinned at some point to have caused this to happen.”

To which I can only say “Lord have mercy on us all.”

To which I can also say we reject this.  I reject this because I live in the grace of God.  The grace of God tells me that none of us get what we deserve.  The grace of God is not only extended to those who are deserving.  This is the God in whom I trust.  Even when I don’t understand and even when I’m asking “Why?” 

I know we want to help each other by offering answers as to why, just as Job’s friends do.  We are well meaning.  We want to help.  Let us beware of offering pat answers in the face of suffering, or even answers that are just plain wrong.  “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.”  “God must have wanted another angel.”  “God needed him in heaven more than we needed him here.”  Job’s friends are offering up an explanation for Job’s suffering which is just making things worse for him.  “You must have done something to deserve this!”  Later on in their conversation, Eliphaz will venture to name what Job has done: “Is not your wickedness great?” he’ll ask. “There is no end to your iniquities.  For you have exacted pledges from your family for no reason, and stripped the naked of their clothing.  You have given no water to the weary to drink and have withheld bread from the hungry.  The powerful possess the land and the favoured live in it.  You have sent the widows away empty-handed, and the arms of the orphans you have crushed.  Therefore snares surround you and sudden terror overwhelms you, or darkness so that you cannot see; a flood of water covers you.” (22:5-11) We’re talking about the danger of making a causal line from suffering to sin.  Now you may be saying “Well surely there’s some sort of connection between the two.”  It is true that we can often draw a causal line from sin to suffering.  Engaging in self-destructive habits often means that things will not go well for us physically.  Cheating on your spouse is not generally conducive to a healthy relationship (to say the least).  Holding a grudge or refusing to forgive is a burden that we will carry.  It will eat away at us and this will not be good for us (or anyone else for that matter).        

We may still be objecting and saying that talk of sowing trouble and reaping the same sounds pretty biblical.  Look at Proverbs 22:8 – “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of anger will fail.”  This is wisdom but is it a promise of God for now?  Two verses earlier we read “Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray.” (Prov 22:6) Is this wisdom or an ironclad truism?  Has no one ever strayed when they are older?  Have we seen all who sow injustice reap calamity?  What do we do with this?

Here's what Violet Gray did with this in a very old Peanuts strip (from 1961). 

Good ol’ Snoopy, reminding us of the need for grace.  Good ol’ Snoopy reminding us of the One from whose fullness we have received grace upon grace.  We remember how Jesus walked alongside the two who were so downcast that first resurrection Sunday on the road to Emmaus.  We remember how he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures beginning with Moses and all the prophets and no doubt including Job.  Let’s look at Eliphaz’s question again in the light of Jesus.  “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?”

Think now.  Think now as we consider what it means to be prepared for suffering when it comes or to live with suffering or respond to suffering or sit with one another in our suffering.  Think of the One who, when he was asked why a man born blind was born blind – was it for his sins or the sins of his parents? – responded “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” (John 9:3)  He healed him.  Blindness was not the end of that man’s story.

Because of Jesus, suffering and even death is not the end of the story.  Do you believe this?  Do you trust in this God?  I do.  Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are preaching a kind of sermon but there is another sermon that needs to be preached.  I’m a big fan of Tom Long, ace US preacher.  He was on a podcast recently talking about how two sermons are preached at every funeral.  This is what he said:

“Well, and this truth telling that we should be doing at funerals is especially important because there are two preachers at every funeral. Capital “D” Death comes to every funeral and loves to preach. And Death’s sermon is the same every time. It’s, “Damn every one of you. I win every time. You want the evidence, it’s right there. I break all loving relationships. I destroy all community. You belong to me.” And we have the duty and delight of standing there and saying, “Oh, death, where’s your victory? Where’s your sting? I tell you a mystery.” We got to say that.”

We got to say it all the time.  If I can’t say it, say it for me. If you can’t say it, let me say it for you.  “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  Suffering and death are not the end of the story.  Let us be reminded of this truth daily.  Let us remind one another of this truth constantly in our words and in our deeds.  There is coming a day when all things will be made right.  There is coming a day when justice will reign.  God’s justice may not look like what I imagine but I’m prepared to let God be God and trust in God’s mercy and justice.  There is coming a day when death will be no more and mourning and carrying and pain will be no more and God will say “I am making all things new.”

Trust in this God with me.  This is the God who is worthy of all our love/adoration/trust/worship no matter our circumstances.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable grace.

Amen

Anyone does well to consider such a question, and we’re proposing another one today as we consider wisdom.  “What is the most important thing to seek after?”  The thing that leads to a meaningful life.  We all want to live meaningful lives.  We are made this way.  We do well to consider the question no matter where we stand in matters of faith.  These are good conversations to have.  In the news app that I read, I occasionally get an article entitled something like “Top 5 Regrets of the Dying.”  Fun, no?  I don’t know what this says about my algorithm but there it is.  They typically list things like I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.  I wish I didn’t work so hard. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.  I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends  I wish that I had let myself be happier.  Happiness is a choice, one article stated.  Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.

I don’t know how helpful that would been to Brother Job.  We’ve been asking questions this whole time, and the question that is asked in our chapter this morning is “But where shall wisdom be found?”  What does it mean to live a meaningful life?  We all, surely, want to live meaningful lives.  This is not just for the end of life when we look back, but for every single day that we wake up.  What is the art of living meaningfully all about?  How wonderful that we get to consider this question together this day before Canada Day 2024!

What does it mean to be wise?  When we’re talking wisdom here we’re not talking about decision making, knowing what choice to make when various choices are laid before us as in a type of “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood” situation.  The ability to discern and choose in any given circumstance is part of wisdom and it plays a part in our everyday lives of course, whether we’re talking about what we’re going to eat, where we are going to go to school or where we are going to live or whom we are going to marry etc.  This is part of wisdom and I pray for help with discernment and decision making daily.

When we’re talking about wisdom here in Job 28 we’re talking about something more foundational.  I’ll put it another way - “What is the thing that’s worth basing your life on?”  What is the thing that is worth making the foundation of your life?  What is the art of living meaningfully?

Deep questions I know.  Meaning-of-life type questions.   Where do you find meaning? The type of question you might think you need to search out the answer to.  The type of question one may think one has to go to the wise person on top of the mountain to find out. Is this the case?  Where is wisdom to be found? 

When we get to this point of the story the talking is over for a little while.  Job and his three friends have been cycling through a conversation.  Job’s friends have been trying to tell him that he or his children must be to blame for what has happened.  It’s a case of cause and effect.  All effects have causes and can, therefore, be explained.  We like that because it enables us to make sense of the world.   Job has been wondering about the justice of God vs. his own integrity or uprightness.  How can the two be reconciled given his current situation?  He’s physically afflicted.  He has lost possessions.  He has lost his sons and daughters.  Much talk has occurred, but nothing has been resolved and God has so far remained silent.  God has been silent since chapter 2.  We hear God’s voice again here though. 

Then we get what our NRSV Bibles call an Interlude.  It’s a soliloquy like the one we heard from Job in chapter 3 before the conversation began.  It’s not addressed to anyone.  There is no consensus as to who it is that is giving the soliloquy. Some say a narrator.  Some say Job. I’m ok with thinking it’s Job.  Nothing has been resolved through all the talking.  Throughout though Job is seeking God.  He’s not turned away, even in his despair.  He’s not listened to his friends who are telling him that he must repent and he will then be restored.  He’s continuing to call out to God, wanting to encounter God, and wanting to pose his questions to God.

And we come to this one – ”Where shall wisdom be found?  And where is the place of understanding?” (28:12)

But before we get to it we have these verses describing how we look for precious metal and gemstones.   He’s talking about human ingenuity.  Human know-how.  Human know-how will not get us to wisdom.  That does not mean that we discount it.  It enables people to plumb the depths.  To put an end to darkness and search out to the farthest bound, the ore in gloom and deep darkness.

There are a couple of things going on here.  1)  We’re talking about mining.  About finding treasures stored in the deepest darkest recesses of the earth.  These are paths that no bird of prey knows, and the falcon’s eye has not seen it.  It takes ingenuity to get there.  It takes work.  It brings forth silver and gold and iron and copper and sapphires.

2)  Precious things come out of plumbing the depths.  Precious things come out of plumbing the darkness.  Previous to this chapter in Job we’ve heard about darkness in purely negative terms.  “Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort before I go, never to return, to the land of gloom and deep darkness, the land of gloom and chaos, where light is like darkness.” (Job 10:22)  There has also been an idea of something coming out of darkness – something good potentially “He uncovers the deeps out of darkness, and brings deep darkness to light.” (Job 12:22)

What truth might we take from this talk of mining?  Job is talking about miners bringing light to dark places and in so doing unearthing treasure.  We’ve been talking from the first week of this series how the story of Job gives us the opportunity to ask important questions.  Sitting with Job in his suffering gives us the chance to consider the kinds of truths that can be understood more deeply when we are in the dark depths.  In sitting with Job’s suffering. In sitting with our own suffering and the suffering of those around us, we have the opportunity for deep to cry out to deep.  We have the opportunity to ask the question “Is God worthy of our worship and love and adoration and trust and attention no matter what is going on?”  We have the opportunity to ask the rhetorical question “Why are the righteous pious?”  In other words “Why do you continue to worship and adore and love and venerate God in any circumstance?” We have the opportunity to answer with our voices and with our lives.

When we face suffering we’re no longer staying on the surface the way we may when things are good.  Bread comes from the earth and that’s a good thing we read in v 5, but underneath the earth is turned up as by fire. Miners put an end to darkness and search out to the farthest bound the ore in gloom and deep darkness.  Job has been looking into the darkness of his own life.  He’s been doing, in a way, the very thing of which he speaks here.  Their eyes see every precious thing.  Hidden things are brought to light.   We are confronted with the essentials.  Non-essentials are stripped away.  We have the opportunity, should we wish to take it, to stop and consider and ask the question  “What is important here?”

And so we ask the question along with Job “Where shall wisdom be found?”

It’s not something to be found in human ingenuity or in a volume of words.  It’s not something that can be commodified.  It’s not something we can go looking for.  We don’t need to go searching for it on the top of a mountain.  It can’t be found in the land of the living or the deep.  It cannot be bought – gotten for gold.  The meaningful life cannot be bought, no matter what retailers would have us think, no matter what advertising would have us think.  Wisdom is something that is literally invaluable.  Gold or glass can’t equal it.  It can’t be exchanged for jewels of fine gold.

Wisdom is not something that we have to find.  I’m reminded of a young person who asked once at a dinner here “How do I find my spiritual path?”  How do I find my path as I go along this road of life with all its twists and turns and valleys and switchbacks and peaks and potholes and all things which we encounter on the road of life?

The answer is of course that Jesus has already made the path.  Jesus goes alongside us on our path as we go along together.

This is where God comes into Job’s soliloquy.  The really interesting thing here is that wisdom is not presented here as an attribute of God.  Wisdom is not presented here as something God is. Wisdom is rather something that God has established.  It is something that God understands the way to.  It is not something that we possess any more than truth is something that we possess. It is not so much a destination as a way that we follow in the same way that the Truth is someone we follow.  Wisdom is something that is made known in God's creative action!  “God understands the way to it, and he knows its place.  He looks to the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens.” (28:24)  All of creation in other words.  “When he gave to the wind its weight and apportioned out the waters by measure when he made the decree for the rain, and a way for the thunderbolt;” (28:25-26) What happened then?  “then he saw it and declared it, he established it and searched it out.”(28:27)  And when God was creating wisdom delighted and when God creates wisdom delights. Listen to Wisdom speaking from Proverbs 8:29-31:

“when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundation of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”  Wisdom.

1. Proverbs.  They call these wisdom books.  Wisdom is established in the loving and creative acts of God.  The way to receive the gift of wisdom is for us to enter into such acts.  How do we do that? The fear of the Lord.  We hear this in Proverbs too.  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Prov 1:7) “Do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.” (Prov 3:7)  Listen again to Job 28:28 as God speaks, “And he said to humankind, ‘Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.’”

What is the most important thing to seek after?  What or who is the one thing that give meaning to everything?  We talked last week about how Jesus talked to the two on the road to Emmaus and interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.  How can we consider these questions without hearing Jesus’ voice echo through the ages – “Strive (or seek) first the kingdom of God and his righteousness…” (Matt 7:33a)

Someone has put it like this – “Wisdom is not discovered by knowing everything about the world... Rather, wisdom resides in God, and it is found in relationship with him as a person reveres and obeys God. True wisdom, then, is not total comprehension of how life works but faithful reverence for the Lord, who sovereignly controls the world he has created.”

Do we believe this truth?  Is God worthy of our trust no matter what? 

And he said to humankind, “Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.”  When we speak of fearing God we’re not talking terror or a flight or fight situation.  We’re talking about reverence and wonder and awe and thanksgiving and let us never get used to this or take it for granted.

Speaking of which, it’s been said that this might be seen as a rather banal or trite conclusion to this hymn to wisdom in Job 28.  “Truly the fear of the Lord is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.”  We may think “Yeah yeah I’ve got that, I’ve heard it a million times before.”    If we are thinking that then let us plead to God to restore to us the joy of our salvation.  Let us never take for granted the creative saving work of God.  Listen to what Paul wrote to the church of Colossae “For I want you to know how much I am struggling for you, and for those in Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face.  I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself.  In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Col 2:1-3)  This is meaningful life.  This is fullness of life.  Paul goes on “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” (Col 2:6-7)  Whether we are in the midst of great suffering or great joy (and often we’re in the midst of both aren’t we?) let us in the midst of our individual and collective situations plead with God that we may see what seems like familiar territory with new eyes and new hearts, created in us by our loving God.    Amen.

Not long ago I talked about an answer to the question “How are you doing?” which I found honest.  “Living between sorrow and joy.”  If you can’t relate to that truth then one day you will.  This passage led me to consider another answer which might be equally true and equally universal.  “Living between hope and despair.”  It may be our own or that of those around us.  From chapters 4 through to 31, Job will be in conversation with his 3 friends, and we may describe him as living between hope and despair.  No matter where we are on the joy/sorrow or hope/despair continuum, I found that thinking about a particular question helped me while I was sitting with this chapter and all of Job’s cursing the day he was born and the night of his conception and asking why.  Here it is with a nod to George Benson and Whitney Houston:

What is the greatest gift of all?  Keep this question in mind as we go.  We need help so let’s ask God for it.

They say silence is golden.  Last week we talked about sitting in silence.  Silence in the face of suffering is often a really good thing.  “They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word, for they saw that his suffering was very great.” (2:13)

Of course, as another wisdom book tells us, there is a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.  We’re about to get into the speaking part of the book of Job.  Three speech cycles between Job and his friends that go from chapter 3 to chapter 27.  Starting with this cry of despair from Job that must be answered, as Eliphaz will say as he starts to speak in chapter 4, “Who can keep from speaking?”

This is an answer to the cry of a grieving heart.  Sometimes we hardly know what we’re saying in grief.  He can’t be gone.  She can’t be gone.  It doesn’t seem real.  We cry out impossibilities.  We cry them out or we hold them inside ourselves.   How can it be?  I just saw her this morning.  Questions that are impossible to answer.  Impossibilities that we long for.  If I could only speak to them one more time. 

If things are bad enough, death would be preferable to this suffering.  If things are bad enough, life or death, it hardly even seems to matter. 

If things are bad enough – I wish I had never been born.  These are not just words that are fired off by an angry teenager as in “I wish you had never had me!”  Although those words can come at a time of life in which we first start to learn about suffering and loss. These are something else.  Remember what’s happened to Job.  His possessions destroyed by wind and fire or stolen.  His children are gone.  The normal course of things destroyed.  He has been thrown. 

Here in chapter three, Job speaks in a soliloquy.  He’s not talking to his friends.  He’s not talking to God directly.  Job is not cursing God, so the question of will he or won’t he curse God remains open.  This soliloquy is a prelude and impetus for the conversation that is about to happen between Job and his friends. This conversation is not going to answer questions of “Why suffering?”   The speeches are going to pose some responses to suffering, and it will be up to us to judge what is good and right and fitting and proper response.  Over everything stands the question with which we began and with which we continue.  We are invited to answer the question with our lives – “Is God worthy of our worship/love/adoration/trust/devotion no matter our circumstances?”  As Job’s wife put it in the middle of so much intense grief – “Do you still persist in your integrity?”  Do we?

Job’s first response is a cry of despair.  Events have gone against the natural order of things – and it’s never in the natural order of things for a child to predecease his or her parent is it?  Job is suffering physically.  He is in spiritual and physical anguish.  If Hamlet’s question is “To be or not to be?” Job’s question goes deeper even that that “To have been or to never have been?” 

Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night that said “A man-child is conceived.”  Let that day be darkness!  May God above not seek it, or light shine on it… Let it not rejoice among the days of the year….

Let that day be darkness.  Let the day I was born be darkness!   This is serious.  We rejoice to mark the day we're born, and you’ll be happy to hear that there is a good theological foundation for this.  There are theological reasons for celebrating birthdays.  They are a celebration of light and life.  Someone has described the day of one’s birth like this – “…that day through which, as through an umbilical cord one receives all the goodness of creation and of its creator, that day the remembrance and celebration of which renews one’s participation in the positive powers of the world order and its divine orderer...” And I thought it was just about cake and presents and your favourite meal and so on!  It’s about celebrating your participation in the world through our God who so wondrously reigns over all!

In his despair, Job is turning away from the created order.  We can’t read these first few verses of chapter 3 without thinking of the first few verses of Genesis 1.  God spoke and said let there be light and there was light and God saw that it was good. Job speaks and longs for darkness.  Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none.

This is not just Job being melodramatic.  He may be a larger-than-life figure but we are still talking about life.  This is Job being real.   This is Job being searingly honest.  Job is famously known as patient but here we see him bitter and broken.  God can handle our bitterness and brokenness and we should be able to handle each other’s bitterness and brokenness.  The Bible recognizes anguish and we needn’t be shocked by it and try to hide it.  All of us have been, are or will be acquainted with sorrow and anguish.  Reading for these weeks in Job, I came across the story of a woman Kelly Lemon Vizcaino.  Kelly was in a car wreck at 12.  It happened during a family road trip when her brother fell asleep at the wheel.  In an interview, she is asked if, during her recovery, she ever wished she were dead.  This is her answer:

“As I look back years ago, it is sad to say there was a time in my life that I prayed out to the Lord to take my life.  I remember it vividly because it was immediately after my thirteen-hour nerve transplant in September of 2000.  I woke up in more excruciating pain than I had ever experienced at the young age of twelve.  My legs were burning, since they removed the long nerve that runs underneath your knee to your ankle, in both legs… Then my neck was in so much pain, since they took out nerve from the spinal cord, causing my left arm to go numb for four months, and the nerve graft was threaded through my chest and into my armpit.  At the time it was the most pain I had ever experienced, and on top of that, I had horrible phantom pains due to the trauma and stress of surgery.  I remember lying down in the hospital bed, crying in pain, and praying, ‘Lord, why did you save my life in the car accident so that you would allow me to suffer to such a great degree?  Lord, please take me home to be with you.  Please allow me to sleep and wake up in your presence.’”  She goes on – “Over time some of the pain subsided.  The Lord gave me peace in my heart and assurance that he had plans for me.  I heard the Lord saying, ‘I didn’t miraculously save you from that accident, only to take you home a couple of months later.  I want to use this trial, and I want to use you… but you need to trust me.’”  So I began trying to think of life on a day-to-day basis, trying to seek him for the strength to endure.”

Job is enduring and he doesn’t remain in solitary despair.  He has not retreated into himself, even in his despair.  Even here Job is looking for something beyond himself.  We said last week that the question Job’s wife asks leads to a deeper search within Job (and within each of us when the possibility of rejecting God is put before us).  In going on, in persisting, and in asking the question “Why?” Job is being taken beyond himself.  The questions are dire – “Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire? Why were there knees to receive me, or breasts for me to suck?”  “Or why was I not buried like a stillborn child, like an infant that never sees the light?” but they are a reflection of the questions people have in the depths of pain and despair.  They’re also a reflection of the good that Job has known in his life.  I have known knees to receive me and breasts at which I was nourished.  I have known light and life.

In asking the question, Job is asking whether a new integrity, a new uprightness may be found.  It is one thing to trust in a God from whom we have received only good things.  Parents to love and care for us.  Health.  Unbroken relationships.  It is another thing to trust in God when we are questioning why things are happening.  Job’s response here at first is a total turning away from God and a trust in God’s created order.  This always remains a possibility and this is why we are encouraged to dwell on the question which we are saying is the basis of this book – is God worthy of our love and our trust no matter what circumstances we are in?

Someone has said there are different levels of consciousness we have.  The first is one that doesn’t really require a lot of thought or critical reflection.  One in which we’re busy with a task at work, or if we’re at ease, aware of the sounds of birds chirping or children playing or the feel of sunlight on our face.  The second is when we become aware of an absence of something.  Everyone else has left the room. The sounds of children have stopped.  Clouds have blocked out the sun. We have lost something.

And often you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone, as experience has borne out.

The question is always how do we live in that?  The story of Job suggests a third level of consciousness, which is that of imagination.   The consciousness that asks “What might be?”  The consciousness of faith.  The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  The consciousness that asks “What might be?” rooted and grounded in the truth that the unknown god has been made known to us in the person of Christ Jesus.

I asked the question at the beginning of this sermon – “What is the greatest gift of all?”  What is the greatest gift of all, the gift that underlies all other gifts?  What is the greatest gift of all if not life?  What is life?  We remember those words from John.  “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  The most precious Word of Life.  What is life lived the way in which God created us to live it?  We remember those words of Jesus in John as he prayed to his Father above – “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Perhaps a good “Why?” question we might ask of God is “Why did you give me this gift of life?”

Job is going to start hearing from and replying to his friends in the next section.  We’re going to come back to it in two weeks and continue on.  Job is enduring and his faith has been stirred up, which is perhaps another answer we should strive for when asked how we’re doing.  I’m living between the joys and the sorrows.  I’m living between hope and despair.  But my faith is being stirred up!  This stirring is going to lead Job to places like this:

“Oh, that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time and remember me…For then you would not number my steps, you would not keep watch over my sin, my transgression would be sealed up in a bag, and you would cover my iniquity.”  14:12, 16-17

“Even now, in fact my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high.” 16:19

“O that my words were written down!  O that they were inscribed in a book!  O that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved on a rock forever!  For I know that my Redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side...” 19:23-27a

Job’s words were written down and they’re a gift thousands of years later..  A Redeemer would come to seal transgressions in a bag – in a shroud in fact.  Even now our witness is in heaven and vouches for us from on high – the royal throne room.  We who are in Christ can say with assurance that our Redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth and that at the last we shall see God in new bodies.

“Why were we given the gift of life?”  That we might each day take up the invitation to follow the one who is life and light.  May God help us to endure and persist in this great faith, no matter our circumstances.  May these things be true for all of us.

Amen

The first day I was there, Wes asked me if would go sit with a woman whose husband had just died.    The second week, Wes asked if I would go sit with a wife (now widow) and two daughters whose husband and father had just died.  They had been waiting for one of the daughters who was flying in from out west.  Wes told me that the daughter had arrived.  He was about to start one of the services and asked me to go in and sit with them while he held the service.

I remember walking to the closed door of the room where this woman and her two daughters were sitting with their late husband and dad.  It was not something I wanted to do.  I had told Wes “Yes” though and I found myself walking toward the door and reaching my hand out to knock.  I can still see his kind of first-person perspective in my mind when I think of the day.  I don’t know what good I did on either of those days.  It didn’t become a weekly occurrence but I often say I had more experience with exposure to suffering and grief there one day per week for 8 months than I might have in a year in some other ministry setting.  I was really thankful for it actually.

Now you might be thinking at this point “What a big downer!”  I’m kind of thinking that myself.  We’re going through the book of Job this summer and it’s not easy to sit with suffering (and this is only the second week).  The subject matter belies sunny days and summer breezes coming in the window, making us feel fine, making us feel like something… lighter?

This story is not light, but the thing about this subject matter in Job is, it gives us the chance to get real.  I told the story about my experience at Sunnybrook Veteran’s because it taught me something very valuable (many things in fact but this one thing in particular for our purposes this morning).  Being in a room with strangers who are suffering from the loss of a loved one makes things very real.  Things just got real.  There is little desire for small talk in such a situation.  It is time at that point to get to the essence of things.

The essence of things.   This is something that the book of Job gives us the opportunity to do.  Get to the heart of things.  Your listening to this story together with us is indicative of a level of interest in getting to the essence of things.  Of coming to know something about the essence of God; of how God relates to us and how we relate to God and one another.

The essentials.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we come back to our story. When we last left Job, he had lost all his wealth.  Camels and oxen stolen.  Sheep burned.  Servants killed.  Even worse was the fact that he had lost his 10 children.  In the face of this loss Job acted and he spoke.  Job shaved his head and tore his clothes.  He worshipped God.  We heard him speak – “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there;  the LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (1:21)

The question has been posed, “Is God worthy of our worship, of our love, of our adoration, no matter what our circumstances?”  We are invited to live into an answer. 

At this point in our story, the ante is upped as it were.  The Accuser said, “Skin for skin!  All that people have they will give to save their lives.”  At the end of the day, in other words, everyone is in it for themselves.  People will do anything to save their own skin.  “Stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”  It’s one thing for God to give and to take away and we can say “Well at least you have your health.”  It’s quite another thing for bad things to come to us in what seems like a more active way. 

Like all the many ways in which bad news can come to us physically.

We come back to Job and read that the Accuser has inflicted him with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.    Job is scraping himself with a potsherd.  A piece of broken pottery.  We don’t know if this is an act of self-flagellation or if poor Job is just trying to find some relief in the way we would scratch an itch or want to bang our head against the wall in the middle of a migraine.  It seems that he is at the town landfill - hence the broken pottery and ashes from burning garbage.  He's cut off.  We don’t know if he’s removed himself from others or if he’s been told to remove himself, as one with a skin condition might be.  There’s a lot of ambiguity here.  A lot we don’t know.

We do know this.  Job has been thrown.

Everything has changed.  Someone has said that often we go through our days with our personal stories meaning so much to us.  Memories of family, friends, good times.  Making new memories – adding to our personal stories as we go through our days.  Oftentimes too we find solace in the universal.  Everyone has a time to die.  No one lives forever.  That kind of thing.

When we’re thrown, these things cease to matter as much or at all.  Time can seem to stop or stand still.  Universal truths mean very little when we are in intensely personal pain. 

In the middle of this, we also have endurance.  Job is enduring.  He’s not saying anything now note.  He’s acting.  He’s sitting in ash.  He’s scraping his skin.  We don’t know why and we needn’t fear not knowing.  There’s ambiguity in our story just as there is ambiguity in life.  Let us not read this story and simply say, “Job is a good role model.”  Very few, if any, people are simply one thing.  Job’s wife is not simply Satan’s accomplice.

“Do you still persist in your integrity?” she asks.  “Curse God and die.”  You have to watch who you call Satan’s accomplice.  It’s true.  Augustine called Job’s wife the devil’s accomplice.  Calvin called her an instrument of Satan.  She can be seen in this kind of light.  A temptor.  Tempting Job to curse God (though the word here for curse is the same as bless, speaking of ambiguity).  Encouraging Job to curse God. These are her only lines in the story.  It seems a little harsh to me.

We may think of her another way.  Job’s bone and his flesh have been afflicted remember.  What is Job’s wife if not bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh?  This is what spouses are after all.  When we read about bone and flesh we are reminded of those words that Adam spoke about Eve back in Genesis – “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” (Gen 2:23)  It’s good to be reminded from time to time.

Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.  We needn’t see Job’s wife as working against her husband here.  If she’s a helper to the Accuser, the Accuser is in a way a helper to us.  Asking the question “Is God worthy of worship in any circumstance?” moves us beyond a simple “What is in this God thing for me?”  Posing the question “Do you still persist in your integrity?” gives Job the opportunity to answer the question.  Posing the question, “Is God worthy of worship/adoration/devotion/trust/love in any circumstance?” gives us the chance to consider and answer.  Let us hear the question this morning.  “Do you still persist in your integrity?” no matter what circumstances we are facing?  Hearing and responding to this question gives us the opportunity to move into a deeper relationship with God.

I should say it can move us into a deeper relationship with God.  It may not.  This stuff is not automatic after all, and that’s why we are all involved in determining the answer to the question with our lives.  Job’s wife is laying out the choice to a question that Job himself might not have dared speak up to this point.  This is the thing about rhetorical questions – they open up possibilities.  What would it be like for us to…?   What are you going to do in the face of losing everything including your good health?  What are you going to do in the face of loss of your health, spouse, parent, child, livelihood, vocation.... whatever suffering we are talking about? We don’t face these questions alone.  Job’s wife, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh is facing them too.  Job answers in a way that suggests that his knowledge of his wife is that she’s not a foolish woman.  He doesn’t say she is foolish.  “You speak as any foolish woman would speak!”  Job then asks aloud rhetorical question of his own, because we shouldn’t consider these rhetorical questions on our own:

“Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (2:10)  Even if we are perplexed.

In other words, do we say “God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good” only when things are good, or do we say it all the time.

We’re talking about what it means to follow God, follow Christ in the face of suffering.  What it means to endure. What it means to hold fast no matter what is going on.  The Psalmist sings of this holding on which is made possible because God is holding on to us.  “My soul clings to you: your right hand upholds me.” (Ps 63:8)  Do we persist in our clinging on?  Knowing that any clinging on that do is rooted and grounded in the truth that God is holding us fast, holding us securely.

Job is enduring.  He’s not sinning with his lips.  I’ll leave it up to debate whether this means Job was sinning in his heart.  Once again there is a lot that is unknown here, and we know that we can sin with our hearts and not our lips.  I don’t want to add to Job’s misery here.

Neither do his friends at this point.  Eliphaz.  Bildad.  Zophar.  You don’t ask these questions on your own and we don’t let one another suffer on our own.  I’m thankful to have learned something about not running away from suffering in my days at Sunnybrook.  I continue to learn and I pray we all are continuing to learn.  Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative is a stance one may take. Keep everything nice and light.  We’re called to carry one another’s burdens though.  We’re called to mourn with those who mourn; to grieve with those who grieve.

Job’s friends come to condole.  It’s not a word we hear very much outside of condolences.  It simply means to grieve with.  I grieve with you.  They came to console and comfort.  The words here connoting sitting on the ground and rocking back and forth. Sharing distress.  To follow Jesus is to be part of his body that is called the church.  When one part suffers we are all suffering.  “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it.” (1 Cor 12:26)

Job’s friends come to condole and comfort.  We can’t help but think of Paul’s words to the people of Corinth about being consoled by Christ to be consoling when he writes “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.” (2 Cor 1:3-4)

It’s like a never-ending spiral of consolation.  It leads to endurance.  To holding fast.

How do we live in the face of suffering?  We’ll keep on answering the question in our lives.  Today let us leave Job and his friends in their silence.  Let us consider the questions that have been asked in silence.  Do we persist in our integrity?  Is God worthy of our love/adoration/devotion/worship on matter what?  In our own silence let us remember the One who showed the Accuser’s to be a liar.  “Skin for skin, all that people have they will give to save their lives,” was the Accuser’s claim.  In Jesus we have an answer to the Accuser’s challenge.  All that people have they will give to save their lives?  No.  In Jesus, we have someone who gave everything he had to save our lives.  No matter our situation, thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.  Thank be to God for his indescribable grace.  Amen

“There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.”  A serious man.  We want to be serious about our faith.  The story of Job invites us to consider the most meaningful questions of our lives. We want to consider these things together with God, even in the hazy lazy days of summer.  Life is going on.  Someone asked me recently how things were going.  My immediate and regrettably glib reply was something like, “Oh fine.  Keeping things together.”  After some more conversation which took a turn to the serious,  I said, “What I should have told you when you asked how things were was that I’m living between joy and sorrow.”

As I was reading for today, I came across this subtitle in one book – “All humans face adversity in some form or another.” “Mmm hmmm!” I thought.  If you know anything at all about the book of Job as we start to read, you know what’s coming.  If you know anything at all about life, you know what’s coming.  I’m looking at my NRSV version and the section that starts at Job and continues on through Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon is called Poetical and Wisdom books.  One thing about these books, you really don’t need to know anything else about the Bible or the story of God for them to resonate.  They speak to human experience in a way that transcends time and place, culture, and race.  The story of Job in particular speaks of suffering and questions are asked about God and suffering.

The thing is with these questions, they’re not so much asked by us but of us.  We’re going to have a chance to sit with these questions and consider these questions over the coming weeks.  I’m thankful for this – not everyone has the will/inclination/opportunity to do this kind of thing you know – sit with such questions at length.  Spend time with them in the presence of and with the guidance of God.  Let’s come before God in prayer as we start.

There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.  Much around this book is uncertain.  Where exactly was Uz?  When was this story written?  Was it written all at once or over a period of time?  Is it about a historical person?  Does any of this really matter when we consider the message or the purpose of this story?

Speaking of questions we don’t have an answer to, let me say off the top that this book does not answer the perennial question “Why do the innocent suffer?”  Why do the good suffer?  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Job speaks to suffering and we will look at it over the coming weeks.  I suppose this is the thing that is difficult to think about, difficult to sit with.  It’s hard to sit with suffering, whether it’s our own or someone else’s.  It’s hard to sit with questions we don’t have answers to.  It’s hard to sit with perplexity.  So often we crave clarity.  Will Shortz is the crossword editor at the New York Times.  He was asked in an interview once why crosswords and puzzles in general are so popular.  This is what he said:

“The fascination is feeling in control. So much of life we have no control over. We just muddle through our private problems and move on to the next thing. With a crossword or other human-made puzzle, you have achieved perfection. That’s very satisfying.”

We muddle through.  In the face of questions like “How can God let this happen?”  “What was this for?”  “How do we find meaning in this?”  “How can we go on?”  “How are we going to live?”  I think of hearing about a child of 10 dying of leukemia in Sick Kids and the father having a conversation with my brother saying “I have a lot of questions to ask God.”  I think of a dear friend who loses their father to a stroke and on the same weekend finds out their mother has an inoperable brain tumour.   Why?

These are questions about our existence.  The “Why do the innocent suffer?” question is not answered in Job.  If anyone told me they have a good answer to “Why do bad things happen to good people?”, I would tend not to believe them.

There’s a deeper question though here for the one who would follow Jesus or the one who is considering what it means to follow Jesus.  No matter where you are on your following, we’re all going to suffer.  I’ve said here before that if you don’t know what acute grief is like you will one day.  I skated through life for 34 years before finding out what acute grief is like.  We will all of us go through circumstances which cause us grief. The deeper question, and it is posed in the heavenly council here in Job 1, is this - “Is God worthy of worship no matter what our circumstances?”  Is God worthy of our worship, adoration, and devotion, matter what is going on?  If not God, then who or what is?

The thing about existential questions – questions that speak to the deepest part of our existence – is that it’s not like we are given the answer to them.  They are not questions that are posed because we lack information and then we get the information and then we say “Oh right thanks for that!”  We who ask the questions live into or become the answer ourselves.  I heard someone say once that there are two existential questions that we start to ask when we turn 12 or 13 or so.  The first is “Who am I?”  The second is “Will they like me?”   Dallas Willard writes about four existential questions that are somewhat similar “What is real or what can you rely on?  Who ‘has it made’?  Who is a good person?  How do you become a good person?”  Even if we are not consciously thinking of these questions, we answer them in the way we live.  We are living answers.

We are living answers to the questions “Where is wisdom to be found and where is the place of understanding?”  To put it another way -“Is God worthy of our worship no matter what our circumstances are?”

The wild thing here in our story is that God and the heavenly council are involved in the question.  The really wild thing is that God involves us in the answer.  But before we get too far ahead of ourselves. There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.  He is blameless and upright.  Wholeness and fair treatment of others.  What you saw what was you got.  The outside reflected the inside.  He feared God and turned away from evil.  Awe and reverence and obedience toward God.  His life is perfect.  The greatest of all the people of the east.  Camels for desert transport.  Donkeys for regular transport.  Oxen for ploughing.  Sheep for food and wool.  Seven sons, and three daughters.  Even the number of kids he has is perfect – seven and three.  Job - this kind of larger than life figure 

But he is also one that enfleshes the questions that are being asked here.  This is not merely a philosophic exercise for those hanging out in student halls or message boards or comment threads. These questions are worked out in our lives.  We might not be able to identify with such riches but we’re given a look at Job’s interior life and he’s just like us.  He worries about his kids.  He wants what’s best for them.  When they’re having parties together (and what great scenes of family togetherness) he gets up early in the morning to offer sacrifices just in case they sinned and cursed God.  He worries about possibilities.  Is this not something with which every parent or child can identify?  I remember Barack Obama talking about peace and reconciliation in the Middle East saying “Don’t we all love our children?”  There is a commonality here.  Let us feel for our brother Job.

Just as Job’s family gets together, the heavenly beings get together.  It seems like it was the Satan’s job, the Accuser’s, the Adversary’s job to go around on the earth looking for virtue.  It seems to have made the Accuser cynical.  “Does Job fear God for nothing?  Have you not put a fence around him and his house and have shielded all that he has, on every side?  You have blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land.” (1:9-10)  Sure Job is pious but how could he not be – looks what’s in it for him!  Look out how materially and familially blessed he is!  Stretch your hand out now and touch all that he has and he will curse you to your face!

Do we fear God for nothing?  Do we make a choice for God?  Do we make a choice for God every day because of what’s in it for us or because God is intrinsically worthy of our worship? 

Let our lives give an answer.  Is God worthy of worship in any circumstance? 

Job receives some bad news.  Have you ever received some news where the person said to “Are you sitting down?”  It’s devastating.  The equivalent of “Are you sitting down?” here is “I alone have escaped to tell you.”  There was a Sabean raid. They stole your oxen and donkeys and killed your servants. Lightning fell and burned up your sheep and servants.  A Chaldean raiding party in three columns has stolen your camels and killed your servants.  Finally, a great wind from the desert collapsed the house where your children were, and they are dead.

I alone have escaped to tell you

Why are the righteous pious?  Job lives into the answer.  He got up, tore his robe, and shaved his head.  There are things we do when we’re confronted by grief.  Rituals.  In my background, you put the kettle on.  Formal rituals that help us.  Emily Dickinson wrote a poem called “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes”.  We pick out a suit or a dress.  Maybe we get dressed up.  We gather together.  We eat together.  Job tears his robe.  Shaves his head.  He worships God.  “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

We worship.

We remember.

We praise God.  It seems like I’ve been involved in more funerals than usual over the last five months.  At the beginning of each one, we praise God.  I read those words with which we began our service today.  1 Peter 1:3 - “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  By his great mercy, we have been given a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the dead.”  Every single time.  We praise God, you see, no matter the circumstances.

No matter what questions perplex us.  We shouldn’t be afraid of not knowing and we needn’t be afraid of being perplexed.  I know we like to be able to solve things.  We like clarity.  I received some good wisdom from the chaplain at Christie Gardens not long ago.  John Duyck is his name.  I was talking about the difficulty of living with a lot of unknown and uncertainty, and about praying to God for clarity.  He told me the story of a man named John Kavanaugh, an author and ethicist, who went to visit Mother Theresa and work at her “house of the dying” in Calcutta. He was trying to figure out what to do with his life.  He asked Mother Theresa to pray for him.  She asked what he wanted her to pray for.  “Clarity,” said Kavanaugh, “Pray that I have clarity.”  Mother Theresa said, “I will not.” She said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.”  Kavanaugh said that she always seemed to have the kind of clarity he was looking for.  Mother Theresa laughed and said, “I have never had clarity; I have always had trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

We needn’t fear perplexity or not knowing why.  Someone has put it like this – “… as perplexing as God’s work in the world often appears, he has given us one crystal-clear and utterly non-mysterious picture of his power and presence that we can lean upon. That is Christ himself.”  As Paul writes in his 2^nd letter to the Corinthians, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair.” (2 Cor 4:8)  Why?  Because we have not been left completely without knowledge.  “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor 4:6)

The one who brings life out of death and hope out of the deepest suffering.

The one who asks questions of us.  Perhaps these questions are more important than anything that could ever perplex us. They’re not questions that we have to go and search out answers for. We are to live out the answers in the power and presence of the Spirit of God.  Questions Jesus asks like:

Who do you say that I am?

Do you love me?

Do you believe I can do this?

Do you want to be well?

When the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on earth?

May our response to these questions be lived out in our trust, in our devotion, in our listening, in our remembering, and in all our living this day and every day.  May this be true for each and every one of us. Amen

“I will not leave you orphaned,” is the promise.  Let us hear that good news this day.  Let us hear the good news of the gift of the Holy Spirit as we remember and celebrate the day of Pentecost.  Fifty days after Jesus was raised.   The coming of the Holy Spirit in wind and tongues of fire.  The breath of God in us.  God is with us in a whole new way.  The advent of the Holy Spirit.  Christmas in May as we break out the red colours for this day only.

But of course, the Spirit is for every day.  Every moment of every day.  Let us ask for God’s help as we hear God’s word for us today.  Let us pray.

This is our third week in these 5 chapters of John – 13 to 17 – in which Jesus addresses his disciples.  The farewell talk.  The discipleship course as it’s been called.  Last week we were reminded that Jesus prays for us and what he prays.  We were reminded of this truth – God has us.  God’s got you.  Today we hear about the promise of another gift which means “God is with you.”

God is with us.  God is among us.  God is in us.  “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” are the words of Jesus with which this chapter begins.  Jesus repeats them in v 27 – “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid.”  This is not a call to live carefree untroubled lives.  We read that Jesus’ spirit was troubled twice in John’s Gospel.  Once at the grave of Lazarus (11:33) and once when he declares that one of the 12 will betray him (13:21).  “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” says Jesus.  We are talking of the Biblical notion of the heart as the centre of our being.  The foundational centre of our will/volition/emotion/intellect.  We need not despair.  We need not fear.  No matter our circumstances.  We have another Advocate, to be with us forever.  This is the Spirit of truth. We’re looking at something foundational to the love of Christ here and loving Christ.  “If you love me,” Jesus says in in v15, “you will keep my commandments.”  We’ve been talking about this the whole journey through the Gospel of John.  We’ve been reminded time and time again of the words of Jesus’ mother – “Do whatever he tells you.” (2:5)  There are two gracious commands or invitations that Jesus makes.  I call them gracious because they are rooted and grounded in God’s grace, God’s unmerited favour.

One -  We looked at the first two weeks ago when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet.  Will we let Jesus wash us?  Will we receive God’s love and God’s forgiveness?  Will we let ourselves be loved by God?  The same invitation is here in chapter 14.  “Believe in God, believe also in me.” (2)  What does belief look like in John’s Gospel?  Belief is trusting, devotion to, hearing, following, remembering, resting in – entrusting one’s life, one’s everything to.  It’s the horizontal aspect to life in Christ

Two – The second gracious command/invitation is horizontal.  We heard about it in the foot-washing story too.  “For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”  The outward movement of living and moving and having our being in the love of God in Christ Jesus.  Jesus will put it this way in chapter 13 – “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.” (13:34-35)

“If you love me,” says Jesus, “You will keep my commandments.”  This “if” could be translated “When”  When we love him, we will be keeping his commandments.  There’s no question here.  I saw a reel recently where a UK comedian was talking about a conversation between two friends of his.  One was a Californian.  One was German.  They were talking about losing their driving license.  The Californian said, “In Germany what would happen if you lost your license, and you know, drove your car?”  The German said, “No you cannot do this.”  The Calfirnan said, “Yeah I know but what happened if you did.”  The German said, “You cannot drive.  You have no licence.”  The Californian said, “Yeah man I know but what if, late one night, you just decide to…” The German said, “IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DRIVE WITHOUT A LICENCE!” 

Impossible!  Jesus is not questioning his disciples’ love for him here, he’s assuming it.  He’s not saying “You should be” or “You ought to be.”  He says “You will.”  To belong to Jesus is to love him.  To love him is to keep his commandments.  I know we love and trust God imperfectly and I know we love one another imperfectly.  The invitation remains – believe and love.  Someone has made this gracious comment on Jesus’ words here – “To want to believe is an authentic form of believing. (We can think of the prayer here – “Lord I believe.  Help my unbelief.”  Or “Lord I trust.  Help my lack of trust.”)  To want to love is a legitimate way of beginning to love. (All disciples want to do what Jesus says.  Not many of us will ever honestly feel that we fully do what Jesus says.)”

In the middle of this we hear Jesus words.  “I will not leave you orphaned.”  We have not been left alone in trusting, loving and serving.  “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.  This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him.  You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” (16-17)

The fulfillment of an ancient promise! Joel 2:28-29

²⁸    Then afterwards     I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,     your old men shall dream dreams,     and your young men shall see visions. ²⁹ Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.

This promise is for everyone.  The promise is a gift we could never get enough of.  The gift is a mystery we could never quantify and so we pray and sing “Come Holy Spirit!”  Fill us.  Flow in and through us that those words of Jesus may find their fulfillment in us – “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”  As Jesus had been sent, the Holy Spirit is sent to us.  God in us.  God among us.

Another Advocate.  Helper.  Comforter.  These are all ways in which the Greek word is translated here.  Paraclete.  Our comforter.  NT Wright describes the Holy Spirit as our comforter like this:

Comfort is a strange and wonderful thing. Have you noticed how, when someone is deeply distressed, after a bereavement or a tragedy, the fact of having other people with them, hugging them and being alongside them, gives them strength for the next moment, then the one after that, then the one after that? Outwardly nothing has changed. The tragedy is still a tragedy. The dead person won’t be coming back. But other human support changes our ability to cope with disaster. It gives us strength. When the spirit is spoken of as the ‘comforter’, this kind of extra strength to meet special need is in mind.

Our advocate.  The one who pleads for us.  The one who understands our plight and pleads for us.  We heard last week about Jesus praying for us.  The Holy Spirit does the same.  Our Advocate.  Paul describes this in his letter to the Romans: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, that that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.  And God, who searches the heart, knows that is the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8:26-27) 

Do you know what we have to fear?  Absolutely nothing.  Jesus spoke to his followers about preparing a place for them, and we are comforted by this.  He also speaks of how we are at home all the way along our journey.  A kind of being “at home on the way.”  Henri Nouwen described being at home with God like this: – “The whole purpose of Jesus’ ministry is to bring us to the house of his Father.  Not only did Jesus come to free us from the bonds of sin and death, he also came to lead us into the intimacy of his divine life.  It is difficult to imagine what this means.”  It’s too wonderful to imagine what this means, but we know that the concept of home (at its best) means.  Safety.  Acceptance.  Understanding.  Freedom to be ourselves.  A place that is good to be.  A place of love.  Listen to how Jesus describes our union with himself and the Father in the Holy Spirit – “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

It is difficult to imagine what this means.  It is impossible for me to describe what the experience of the Holy Spirit is like.   Jesus describes it like this – “You will see me.” (19)  “You will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” (20) “Those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” (21)  We have this cycle of seeing God’s love and grace; of knowing that we are caught up in the loving life of Father, Son and Spirit; and of more of God’s grace and love being revealed.

“They’ll know you’re my followers,” says Jesus, “By the love that you have for one another.”  It’s a wonderful truth of our faith that we are called and enabled to be experiences of Christ to others.  In our words.  In our actions.  Not on our own.  “I will not leave you orphaned,” is the promise.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit in us.  Teaching us everything.  Not everything as in every subject in the world.  The Holy Spirit is not teaching nuclear physics.  Teaching us everything of God and the ways of God.  Reminding us of all Jesus said and teaching us what it means on Mau 19^th, 2024, in Toronto or from wherever we may be hearing Jesus’ words.  Bringing us peace.  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” (27)   Peace not simply the absence of conflict or even the absence of a troubled spirit, but as a deep-seated assurance that we are in God and that God is in us.  A gift given not as a world in rebellion to God gives gifts – with strings attached or ulterior motives or self-interest at the heart of the gift – but because God is good and God gives good things freely. 

There’s an interesting line at the end of chapter 14.  “Rise,” says Jesus, “Let us be on our way.”  The talk goes on for another three chapters, so either this was once where the talk ended or Jesus and his disciples decide to take a walk.  Either way, we are always figuratively rising and being on our way from our journey through John’s Gospel.  As we do may the Holy Spirit bring Jesus’ words to us.  I am the light of the world.  I am the bread of life.  I am the good shepherd.  As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.  Abide in my love.  Do you love me?  Feed my lambs.  Tend my sheep.  Feed my sheep.  And this:

“Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

Amen      

Today let us rest in this truth.  Jesus prays for us.  Jesus prayed for us and we know what he prayed.  Jesus prays for us on an ongoing basis, seated at the right hand of the throne.  This is another piece to the answer to the challenge – How do we stay together when Jesus is no longer physically present (and hasn’t been now for over 2,000 years)?  How do we stay in touch with this Risen One?  How can we continue to believe in and live in relation with one we can no longer see or hear?

In the middle of these questions, Jesus prays for us.  Someone who was very good at prayer prays.  John 17 is a gift to us, may we rest in it today and every day.  Let’s come before God in prayer as we begin.

If you know me or are getting to know me, you will know that I am not really one for telling people what to do.  Make of that what you will for good or for ill.  I do understand though, that there are times in which I might give some advice that would be of benefit to people.  This is one of those times, so here it is.  If you are part of a group of people that gets together to pray for one another on a regular basis, keep on doing that.  If you are not part of such a group, I encourage you to become part of one.  If there is a group of people at Blythwood or a church near you which is suitable for your schedule, join us (or them).  If we can help to create such a group which would suit your schedule, please talk to me or one of our church leaders here.

We call praying for one another “intercessory prayer.”  Intercessory is one of those words you don’t really hear outside of church or even without “prayer” being attached to it.  It’s the adjective form of intercede which is more familiar.  To act on another’s behalf.  To literally “go between” from the Latin original.  When we are sharing our burdens and in so doing carrying one another’s burdens and in so doing fulfilling the law of Christ; when we hear each other pray, we are getting to know each other’s hearts.  We are getting to know each other’s centres. 

Jesus is our great Intercessor.  Any talk of prayer on our part is rooted and grounded in him.  In this prayer we get to know Jesus’ heart.  After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said,  This is a good prayer posture.  Looking up.  Hands held out to receive.  The posture in which we pray can help in our encounter with God.  We want prayer to be an encounter with God.  An encounter with the transcendent which is beyond what we can touch, see, hear, smell, taste.  We ask God to give us spiritual eyes to see and spiritual ears to hear.  I was talking to a friend recently about the challenge of seeing beyond what we can physically see – encouraging a sense of the transcendent.  Prayer encourages this.  Looking up.  We generally pray with our head bowed and eyes closed.  We hear of people in the Gospels falling at Jesus knees or falling at his feet.  Kneeling or falling on our faces before God may be entirely appropriate too.   Here Jesus is looking up, and says, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you…” 

The hour is here.  The weekend is here.  Good Friday to Raised to Life Sunday.  Glorify your name is “Let your name be known.”  Let who you are made known, as the ways of God are going to be made known in an outpouring of love and forgiveness on Friday and new life – a whole new beginning on Sunday.  The way back to God will be made.  The way to eternal life has been made.  What do we mean when we say eternal life?  Not simply a belief in the afterlife, though it is a promise for “in life and in death”.  This is how Jesus describes eternal life, or life from above, or life of the ages.  This is life lived as it we have been created to live it.  This is the gift of God in Christ Jesus.  “That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

It's good to make this prayer our own.  Substituting “Jesus” for “I” and “I” or “me” or “we” or “us” when we see they or them.  “This is eternal life Lord, that we may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”  We could go on here, “Jesus glorified you on earth (Jesus made your name known – Jesus made your ways known on earth) by finishing the work that you gave Jesus to do.”

Thank you.  Just.  Thank you.

We want to be people of gratitude.  People with grateful hearts.  Let us start here.  Through the birth and life and death and raising and ascencion of Christ Jesus.  Through the Holy Spirit who has been sent to live in us (who again we will celebrate next week on Pentecost Sunday).  We have been given knowledge of God.  Not just head knowledge or knowing facts or cognitive knowledge but knowledge that goes to the centre of our being – the centre of our will, our volition, our wisdom, our emotions, our thoughts.  We have been given knowledge of God’s name which means knowledge of God’s ways which are mercy and grace and peace and joy and justice and love.

Thank you.

Jesus’ prayer turns to his followers in v6.  “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.  They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.  Not they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.” (6-8)  Jesus is speaking of the ones that will be sent.  We remember that the man born blind in ch 9 was instructed to go to a pool called “Sent.”  We remember that Jesus will say to his disciples before his departure, “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 

Jesus holds those he is sending in his heart. Jesus holds those he is sending in his prayer.  “They are in the world,” Jesus tells his Father, “But I am coming to you.”  Jesus prays on their behalf.  The Church will become Christ’s body in the world.  Jesus becomes our advocate above.  The Holy Spirit becomes our advocate here – God with us in a whole new way.  The Church’s role will be to become God’s advocates and witnesses in the world – enlivened and empowered by the Holy Spriit of God and prayed for by Jesus who asks on the disciples’ behalf, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”   Keep them in your name.  Keep them in your name because they will face persecution and opposition.  Keep us in your name.  Keep us faithful in living and speaking the truth of Jesus as fully God and fully human.  The truth of Jesus as revealer of God who is at the same time beyond our comprehension and as close as our breath.  Keep us in your name that we may be one just as you and Jesus are one Lord.  Where the church is faithfully proclaiming “Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!” in word and in deed with all grace and hope and peace and justice and mercy and love that goes along with that truth, we are being kept in his name.  Somone has said, “Where the Father keeps the Church in this name, and in all that this name means, the Kingdom of God is present, alive, and at work in the world.”

We bless one another with the words “The Lord bless you and keep you.”  We pray “Lord bless us and keep us.”  Keep us in your name.  This is an effective prayer!  How can we say this?  The fact that we are here following Christ.  The name of Jesus, the good news of Jesus, has been preserved and passed on to this day.  We have no intention to stop.  We can say with Peter when Jesus asked were the 12 going to leave him too – “Lord to whom would we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  We’re not going go stop now.  (“Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” as the song goes).     May this be joy to us.  May this be a joy to us?  At the midway point in his prayer (verse wise at least) Jesus sounds a not of joy.  May being kept in the name be a joy.  “But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.”  There are a lot of tough situations in life.  There is a lot we don’t know.  How are things going to go?  Here is something we know and we are reminded of in Jesus’ prayer.  We have not been left alone.  Jesus speaks of his joy here when he’s speaking of his friends.  It’s wonderful to think that our turning to God, our resting in God’s delivering grace in Christ brings God joy.  Listen to how joy is described in Zephaniah – “The Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who give victory, he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love, he will exult over you with loud singing.” (Zeph 3:17)  May we rest in that joy that goes beyond circumstances.  It doesn’t mean going around smiling all the time or faking anything.  There is a time to laugh and a time to weep.  A time to rejoice and a time to mourn.  It does mean that we live with the joy of a deep seeded assurance that God has us.  That God keeps us in his name.  That we belong to Jesus.  “I got you” is a popular way of saying “I’m looking out for you.”  I’ve got your back.  God’s got you.  Let us rest in this.

As we turn to the third part of the prayer, in which Jesus prays for us and by extension the whole world.  “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.  As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”  Seven times Jesus prays “that they may be”.  Four of these times Jesus prays that we may be one – “so that they may be one, as we are one.” (11)  “that they may all be one” (21)  “so that they may be one, as we are one” (22) “that they may be completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (23)

Eleven years ago I had the opportunity to go to Beirut Lebanon along with 4 other pastors from around Ontario.  We stayed at the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary and learned a lot about what mission looked like in North Africa and the Middle East.  One afternoon, two of us had the chance to accompany two women from the seminary who were serving refugees from Iraq.  We visited the home of a Iraqi woman who had been a hairdresser back home.  She was also a Christian.  Visiting must have been in the air that day.  While we were there, along came another visitor.  A local Maronite Catholic priest.  I didn’t even know what Maronite Catholic was at the time.  We talked and prayed together with the help of our hosts translating.  Before we left, our sister in Christ from Iraq took out her Bible and said she wanted to read a passage.  It was from this prayer.  “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (22-23)

The unfathomable/eternal/beyond space and time love that flows between God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit of God is foundational to God’s mission to the world.  The same love in which we are caught up as Christ’s followers is to be foundational to our mission of knowing Christ and making Christ known.  I’ve been talking about resting in this prayer.  Let us rest in the promise that Jesus makes as he closes and as we close.  “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (26)  Jesus has made his name known.  How do we know?  The witness of lives lived in him.  He will make it known.  Thanks be to God for the promise.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

Amen 

Bread and cup.  Basin and towel.  Let us hear Jesus’ words spoken to us this day.  “For I have also set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”  These words of Jesus come to us at the beginning of five chapters in John which are like Jesus’ farewell gift to the church.  Jesus and the disciples are not travelling.  They are not out in the street with all the noise and distractions that the street brings.  I normally like to leave them open the whole service.  These five chapters are known as Jesus’ farewell discourse.  Farewell talk.  Someone has called them Jesus’ discipleship sermons or Jesus’ discipleship course.  They are a gift to the church.  They are a gift to the disciples to whom Jesus speaks, and all the disciples who will come after, who will face this problem:

How do we stay together when Jesus is no longer physically present?  How do we stay faithful and committed to one that we cannot see?  Someone has put it like this – “How do we stay in touch with a Risen One? How can we connect with an invisible Lord? How can we continue to have relations with, and so believe in, Someone we can no longer see or hear?”   Answers will come in these five chapters, and we’re going to be spending the next 3 to 4 weeks looking at the answers.  Let’s ask for God’s help today as we look at where it starts.  Let us pray.

I wonder, what are the ways in which you keep truths of our faith in front of you?  What are the ways in which you are reminded daily?  When I was called to pastoral ministry here at Blythwood 13 years ago, you gave me some items to remind me.  Two of them were this box of salt and this candle. Salt and light.  You are the salt of the earth.  You are the light of the world.  Two of them were this bowl and a towel.  I keep them on a shelf in my office.  John 13.  Jesus’ actions and Jesus’ words.  It is in chapters 13-17 that the concept of God’s love comes to the fore.  We have heard a lot about light and life.  Not so much yet about love.  Sure we hear that God so loved the world in John 3:16.  We heard last week that Jesus loved Lazarus along with his sisters Martha and Mary.  We read the word six times in the first 12 chapters of John, but it comes on now like an avalanche (an avalanche of God’s love) 31 times in these 5 chapters in order to remind us how Jesus feels about this community of faith and service and love which we call the church. Let us hear this.  Let us let ourselves be loved.  “Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father.  Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”  Let us hear these words echo.  “As the Father has loved me, so I love you. Now remain in my love.” (15:9)  “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (13:34)  “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (15:12-13)  Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.  He loved them to death.  He loves us to death.  He loved them to the uttermost.  He loved them to the nth degree.  We try and find words to express this kind of love.  In a children’s book called Guess How Much I Love You, Big Nutbrown Hare has this conversation with Little Nutbrown Hare as the child is being put to bed:

 ‘I love you up to the moon,’ said Little Nutbrown Hare. ‘Oh, that’s far,’ said Big Nutbrown Hare. ‘That is very far.’ Big Nutbrown Hare settles Little Nutbrown Hare into his bed of leaves. He leaned over and kissed him goodnight. Then he lay down close by and whispered with a smile, ‘I love you to the moon and back.’

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.  Jesus then acts out a parable to show what God’s love looks like.  “The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him.  And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.  Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.” (2-5)

Before we consider the question of how we relate to God and how we relate to one another, we must consider how God relates to us.  In one move, Jesus sweeps aside notions of God about domination or remote, aloof impassivity or pride.  God kneels before us and serves us.  God kneels before us and cleanses us.  We are walking on holy ground here sisters and brothers.  Let us take this in.  “You laid aside your majesty” we sing.  “For us he was made sin,” we sing.  “Lord help me take it in.”  What is going on here is a kind of encapsulation of Jesus’ incarnation – that 1 billion view of the Word in the beginning that was with God and was God that became flesh and pitched his tent among us and moved into the neighbourhood.  This scene is a preview of Jesus setting down his life in the same way he took off and set down his outer robe here – in order that we might be made clean.  In order that we might be forgiven.

There was a man named Severian who was a bishop in a town called Gabala in modern-day Syria.  This is what he had to say in a sermon about Christ’s downward movement here: “He who wraps the heavens in clouds wrapped round himself a towel. He who pours the water into the rivers and pools tipped . . . water into a basin. And he before whom every knee bends in heaven and on earth and under the earth knelt to wash the feet of his disciples.”

Can we deal with such a God?  Can we handle such a God?  Is this too demeaning, too pedestrian, too parochial?  Does it insult our intelligence?  There’s opposition to this God of course.  There is opposition in our story.  Two of the 24 feet that are being washed here belong to Judas after all.  Richard Dawkins had this to say about the grandeur of God and the offence of the cross - “I don’t see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the Cross as worthy of that grandeur [of the supernatural]. They strike me as parochial (too narrow in scope). If there is a God, it’s going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.”

In front of Dawkins and in front of everyone Jesus kneels and asks, “Will you let me wash you?”  Will we let Jesus wash us?  Will we let ourselves be loved by Jesus because we need him?  To follow Christ is to have been forgiven – to have been made clean by Christ’s blood shed for the forgiveness of many.  To follow Christ is to continue to allow him to wash those part of us that get dusty and dirty as we go along the way with Him and with one another.

Peter objects.  Peter does not understand things that he will understand later.  We may object.  We misunderstand things that we will understand later.  “Unless I wash you,” Jesus tells him, “you have no share with me.”  Being cleansed; receiving forgiveness – not because we deserve or don’t deserve it, but because it is the unmerited gift of God’s grace – will be the foundation of our relationship with God.  Someone has put it like this, “Forgiveness of sins will be the foundation of our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ — constantly — or there will never be a firm foundation or good relation with Jesus Christ or with his Father — ever or whatsoever.”  Peter’s objections here represent two responses to God’s grace.  One is “I don’t need it.”  “You will never wash my feet.”  The other is “I’m not worthy of it.”  We’ve been told “Let conscience be your guide” and our conscience is helpful to us when it comes to morals and ethical action.  My conscience can also deceive.  We can very easily explain away wrongdoing to ourselves and say “My conscience is clear.”  A guilty conscience may be so weighed down by the guilt of messing up that we think there is no coming back from this.  Here is grace.  We can’t earn or disqualify ourselves from Jesus’ cleansing.  The good and right and fitting response is to simply say “Forgive me.  Cleanse me.  Make me new.” What does this mean in terms of how we relate to one another?  It turns widely held views about hierarchy and self-interest and who deserves what upside down.  Jesus talked about his reign in terms of a Kingdom, and we must be aware of the kind of notions a Kingdom brings to mind.  Notions of power and those with power vs those without.  Notions of self-promotion and jockeying for top positions what number are you in line for the throne and where do you stand in the hierarchy and people even in the royal family sometimes feeling that they are nothing but a spare.  “Not so with you,” says Jesus.  Through the gift of the Holy Spirit in us (which we’ll get to in a couple of weeks in ch 16), Jesus still seeks, finds, befriends, washes, and comforts.   The church which Paul will describe as Christ’s body is not to be about self-promotion/interest/aggrandizement/imposition.  

“Do you know what I have done to you?” asks Jesus.  “You call me Teacher and Lord – and you are right, for that is what I am.  So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” 

If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.  How we relate to one another is rooted and grounded in how God relates to us.  Blessed are those, happy are those, in a good position, are those who live lives of mutual service, forgiveness, patience, hospitality, goodwill toward and good presence with customers, clients, students, teachers, friends, neighbours, and family.  Being “at your service” as a way of life, as someone has said.  This is how we are loved and served by God.  In acts of service, we are reminded of how God loves us.  I was reminded of this during the dinner we had with our Out of the Cold volunteers and partners a week (and a half) ago.  Larry Matthews was talking about the difference in having “guests” coming to our church to eat and sleep vs. being out in public in the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Trinity behind the Eaton’s Centre.  Larry talked of a levelling of the power dynamic.  Those serving still have an amount of power in bringing food and clothing, and in the fact that we have homes to go to when it is over.  But Larry talked about how with disruptive guests, we always had the option here at church to ask them to leave.  Outside there is no such option.  Larry talked about how we needed to come alongside (literally) people in their outbursts or disruption or complaining or conflict.  We needed to come near them and stay with them.  I truly believe we can be experiences of God’s love for one another, and I thought “Well that’s the same way that God loves us. God doesn’t kick us out or ask us to leave, but comes alongside us in our outbursts and disruptions and upsets.” God comes to us with a basin and towel.  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gifts.

Amen

I saw a young man in the gym recently with a tattoo on his shoulder that says “Hockey is life.”  It’s been said of basketball “Ball is life.”  The NBA and NHL playoffs are on right now for those who are interested.  Countless hours are spent discussing and dissecting games.  This is not an indictment against tattoos, hockey or basketball, I’m simply asking the question. “What is life?”  Family?  Money?  It’s an important question.  By definition, it’s a matter of life and I’d say it’s a matter of death too.  It’s a matter of life and death.  We’ve been in the Gospel of John now for some weeks and we hear the words echo.  “All things came into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” (1:3-4)

May God enable us to proclaim this truth and to live it out as long as it’s still day- in other words as long as we have life and breath here.  We come back to it, and we come back to it, and we come back to it.  Let us come back to a statement of faith that we heard on Easter Sunday morning:

The good news in which we believe as followers of Christ: “I believe that Jesus really has been raised from the dead; that he really is Lord; that death really is defeated; that everything Jesus said is true; that this is the single most important and astonishing fact and event in world history.”

We’re talking about life in Christ.  We’re talking about the defeat of death.  T.S. Elliot wrote some great lines about why we should love the church:  “She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget./ She is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft.”  So let us be tender where we need to be and stand hard and fast where we need to.   Let us weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice as we consider God’s word for us today.  Let us pray.

We’re on the last of the seven signs in John.  We started with a wedding and are ending with a funeral.  We’ve heard about a new age of abundant grace in Jesus.  We’ve heard about people being made well, being able to walk, being able to see.  These stories have told us about what God is like and what life in Christ is like.  Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.  This is life!  We’ve heard about abundant food and talked about abundant life lived in communion and fellowship and connection with God in Christ and in the Spirit of God. 

In life and in death.  This is a good funeral.  I was talking about a funeral I was part of recently, and said that it was a good day.  The question was asked, “How can a funeral be good?”  This is a good question.  Too often we ignore the concept of death, despite its inevitability.  Perhaps this is because it could drive us to despair.  Isn’t death the end of all hope?  Isn’t death the end of any expectation of good?  In the face of death, we stand resolutely in Christ and we answer “No!”  We remember those words “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  We remember those words “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”  It’s a good funeral because God is there.  It’s a good funeral because the one who is the resurrection and the life is there.  It’s a good funeral because truth is being proclaimed about life and death.

Do you believe this?  Let us hear that question addressed to ourselves.  “The Teacher is here and he’s calling you.”  The same way the Teacher called Mary’s name at the empty tomb in the garden.  Hush, somebody’s calling my name. Let us hear those words addressed to ourselves.  Someone has said they should be printed on every pew and pulpit in every church.  The Teacher is here and he’s calling you.`         

The story stands on its own.  Let us hear it. Three siblings.  Mary.  Martha.  Lazarus.  The sisters send a message to Jesus in their trouble.  “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”  What a good way to bring our troubles to God when those that we love are ill.  “Lord, my brother whom you love is ill.”  “Lord, my parent who you love is ill.”  “Lord, my sister whom you love is ill.”  “Lord, my child whom you love is ill.”  Augustine, the North African bishop said of this message:

They did not say, “Come” . . . , but only, “Lord, behold, he whom you love is ill” — as if to say: It is enough that you know. For you are not one that loves and then abandons.

“This illness does not lead to death,” says Jesus, “Rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”  We can say the very same thing about Jesus’ death, which comes about because of this story.  It’s after Lazarus is raised that Jesus’ execution becomes the plan (12:53)  Of course Jesus’ execution is not the end of the story, any more than Lazarus’ death in Jesus' absence is the end of his story.  I have to say that this is a truth that needs to be made known at any funeral.  At every funeral I conduct I say at some point “This is not the end of their story.”  We have Jesus deciding to go to Bethany despite the danger he is facing.  We have a misunderstanding once again when Jesus says that Lazarus is asleep.  The disciples take him literally.  “If Lazarus is sleeping this is good no?  Sleep’s often just what we need when we’re sick!”  We have Jesus telling them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.”  We have Thomas.  This is good for Thomas.  We often focus on the doubting part in John 20 (and don’t get me started on the whole Doubting Thomas thing).  We can’t read Thomas’ tone here.  We don’t know if it’s steely resolve or a hands-thrown-in-the-air resignation.  Look at what he says though, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”  Let us go with him, that we may die to ourselves and in so dying find life.  Let us go together with him dear church family.

Jesus arrived and found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Martha goes out to meet him.  The next place that Jesus is going to arrive at is Jerusalem.  People will come out to meet him there too.  We can see the ties between the two stories that are going on.  Martha comes out to meet Jesus and brings to Jesus her “if only.”  “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”  Martha brings her “if only” to Jesus in faith.  This is honest.  We understand this.  We understand the sadness of “if only.”  If only he hadn’t taken that route.  If only this had been diagnosed earlier.  If only I had worked harder/studied harder.  If only I had known...  It’s like a kind of nostalgia.  Nostalgia can be a type of longing for a past that very often never existed in the first place.  “If only” brings in a sort of present nostalgia.  It’s a longing for a situation to be different now based on something that we wish had or hadn’t happened in the past.  Both Martha and her sister Mary are honest with Jesus.  We can be honest with God.  Let us bring our “if only’s” to God.  In the same way, the Psalmist brings “How long O Lord” to God.  God can handle our complaining about timing or anything else.  The deeper significance is that we are coming to God.  Martha and Mary remain devoted to Jesus, who, we have been reminded, loves them.  In tragedy or situations in which we wonder why, we need especially to be reminded of God’s love.

If only I had… If only I hadn’t…  “If only you had been here…”  “But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” (11:22).  Even now.  Author James Baldwin once wrote, “The Lord never seems to get there when you want him, but when he arrives, he’s always right on time.”  Even now.  Martha brings her “if only” to Jesus.  Jesus talks about the future.  “Your brother will rise again.”  Martha answers, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”  This was a common Jewish belief of the time.   A new heaven and a new earth where peace and justice would reign.  “I know that,” says Martha, and it seems to be not a terribly comforting thought in her acute grief.  I understand this.  When my father died, I remember people asking me how I was doing.  I was a little bit cliched, saying things that we are expected to say.  “I’m doing fine,” I would say, “I know I’ll see him again.” In actual fact, I wasn’t doing very well with it and really should have been more honest about that.  We learn, though.  I remember a friend saying to me, “You don’t have to put a bow on it,” and he was right. 

Into the middle of this comes Jesus’ pronouncement and Jesus’ promise.  Resurrection, rising again, new life, is not just something we believe in.  It’s not some vague idea about some sort of life after death.  It’s a person.  He’s standing in front of Martha.  In the Spirit of God, he’s standing with us today.  Resurrection, new life, is a person who brings the future promise right into our present and right into the middle of all our “if only’s.”  “I am the resurrection and the life (again the promise of life abundant – life lived in communion with the divine – in communion with God).”  And then the promise – “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who believes in me will never die.”

NT Wright, in his commentary on John, puts it like this – “He is challenging her, urging her, to exchange her ‘if only…’ for an ‘if Jesus…’ If Jesus is who she is coming to believe he is…If Jesus is the Messiah, the one who was promised by the prophets, the one who was to come into the world…If he is God’s own son, the whom in whom the living God is strangely and newly present… If he is the resurrection-in-person, life-come-to-life…”

If Jesus is life who has come to bring life, life who comes to bring life, life who will come to bring life…  Then how should we respond to him? 

We as a church need to be re-evangelized. I believe this.  We need to be brought back to the good news, to fundamental truths about this Jesus who we follow.  If you’re not following him then hear the good news. If you’re following him, then hear the good news.  To follow Jesus is not hedging our bets against the afterlife.  This story is not here to show us simply that Jesus has the power to raise the dead, but that Jesus has the power to give new life.  Resurrection life – rising again life – is not simply something we look forward to, but something we take part in and share now.  To be “in Christ” and for Christ to be “in us” means that the one who is the resurrection and the life is in us as we are in him.  It is the life of the ages, eternal life that begins now and that even physical death cannot bring to an end.      

Christ in us, the hope of glory.  What a marvellous mystery.  How beyond our ability to grasp.  At the same time, it’s something the youngest among us can understand.  Christ in me.  I myself in Christ.  The resurrection and the life in me.  Now.  Always.  Do you believe this?  I believe it.

Do you believe it?  This is Jesus’ question now.  “Do you believe this?”  When we read “believe” as we’re going through the Gospel of John, we can consider words like devote ourselves to, listen, worship, rest in, entrust ourselves to, trust.  “Do you trust me?” asks Jesus.  It’s a very personal matter.  We’re not talking in generalities at this point or merely philosophizing.  The question is before us if we’re hearing it right now.  The question is not “Do you believe in some sort of vague idea of life after death or that there is something beyond this life?” but “Do I trust that Jesus means what he says?”  In one of the great statements of faith, Martha answers, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ – the anointed one, the chosen one – the Son of God, the one who came into the world, comes into the world and will come into the world.

In a little while, Jesus is going to cry with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”  Jesus meets death head-on.  An immovable object meets an irresistible force.  Death is swallowed up in victory.  “Lazarus, come out!”  It’s the invitation to new life.  Not the resurrection life which is to come, because Lazarus will live out his days after all and die a physical death at the end of them.  New life in Christ began that day for Lazarus, which would be marked by a life lived in the presence of Jesus.  Look at 12:1 – “Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, who he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served (typical Martha!), and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.”  The invitation is to new life.  The invitation is to take our seat at the table with Jesus.  May this be an invitation we each take up daily, and may this be true for us all. Amen.

Item: In 1947, Hank Williams (a man who knew something about darkness), inspired by something his mother said, writes and records “I Saw the Light” which contains the lyrics “I wandered so aimless, my life filled with sin/ I wouldn’t let my dear Saviour in/ Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night/ Praise the Lord I saw the light!”

Item: At a funeral for a dearly beloved woman of God in Thornhill on April 15^th, 2024, a group of people proclaim in song, “I once was lost but now am found/ Was blind but now I see.”

This is our story, dear family. This is our song as we hear the story of the 6^th sign in John 9.  The 6^th of 7 signs in John that speak of who Jesus is and what it means to live in the light of the one who is life.  Another sign of the ways in which things are turned right side up in the kingdom of God as we hear these words of Jesus – “I came into this world for judgement (a verdict, a decision) so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”

So where do we stand on this?  Do we see or do we not see?  Do we say “Lord help me to see in the light of your love and grace and mercy and justice?”  Do we say “Enlighten the eyes of my heart?”  Do we say “I see quite well thank you.  I see quite well in the light of my own education/experience/beliefs about how the world works.  I know who’s deserving and who’s not deserving.  I know who needs to be included and excluded.  I know who’s in and who’s out.  I know what’s possible and what’s not possible.”

They say that what goes around comes around, to which I say “Does it?”  We all know about karma.  The idea that the good you do will come back to you and the bad that you will do will also come back to you.  Good karma.  Bad karma.  Things are said about what karma is that I can’t repeat here.  We get what we deserve good or bad.  We can go to creditkarma.com to track the credit rating we deserve, and the world is a moral vending machine in which what we are rewarded for what we put in.

Which leads to a good question that we’ll come back to - “What is your impetus/motivation for doing good?”  which I will answer right now and say “We must work the works of him who sends us while it is day” – in other words as long as we have life and breath.

Getting back to karma, one day coming out of the supermarket which Nicole and I frequent, I looked in our cart and saw a jar of hamburger sauce (secret sauce) lying on its own.  It had not been checked through with our other groceries.  I’m not saying I’m a paragon of virtue but I do try.  I went back to the customer service desk and explained what had happened.  The young lady there rang it in and as I was leaving said “That was such an honest thing to do.  Good karma for you.”

Now I didn’t want to get into a theology discussion right then and there – I felt it might have been intrusive (not that I’m against such things of course).  This is my issue with the idea of karma.  I get it.  I get that we want to be able to explain why things happen – both bad and good.  I know that karma is often discussed in terms of the good that can come back to one and is often used as a motivator for moral action. 

The problem that I have with karma is that it would explain bad things as being a result of bad things that you have done in this life or in a past life.  I don’t see the universe as that simple and it seems like a bit of a monstrous thing to suggest to someone that they are inexplicably suffering because of something bad that they have done.  The world is one crazy mixed-up place and we are right to be skeptical of those who offer easy explanations.  The Bible never shies away from dealing with the reality in which we live.  It’s a world where, for example, people are born blind.

Jesus and his disciples are in Jerusalem. As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.  For the disciples it’s not even a question of if this man was suffering due to some sin, it was a question of who was to blame, him or his parents.  Look at what is happening here.  Jesus notices those who are suffering.  Jesus is drawn to those who are suffering.  Jesus comes alongside those who are suffering.  In the face of suffering, Jesus speaks and acts.  In the face of pre-creation formless void and darkness in Genesis 1, God does not enter into a discussion as to where this void came from or why this darkness is here.  God speaks and acts creatively and decisively.  Jesus speaks and acts creatively and decisively.  “’ As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, ‘Go wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent).  Then he went and washed and came back able to see.” (9:5-7)

 Jesus goes about his Father’s work and he goes about doing what his Father does.  He goes about setting things right. God is making things right.  God will one day make all things right.  Suffering is not a problem for us to solve.  That doesn’t mean that we’re not called to come alongside suffering.  It doesn’t mean we are called to turn our faces away from it or not seek to help and comfort.  What are the questions that we should be asking in the face of suffering?  Someone has put it like this, “God, what are you doing in all of this and how can I join you in it? What are you saying and how can I hear you better? What are the works of God waiting to be revealed in me and in each of us?”

In the midst of suffering, God takes creative and decisive action.  We are post-Easter people. We are resurrection people. We remember those words about Jesus “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  I know a lot of people were focused on the sun during the eclipse two weeks ago, but one of the wild things I saw (though not in person) was the kind of 360-degree colours of dawn that people on whom darkness fell could still see.  Like a dawn all around you in the middle of darkness! 

Our invitation is to walk in the light of the world.  To listen to him.  This blind man didn’t understand everything and neither do we.  He listened to Jesus and he acted.  This man becomes another in a line of people in John’s Gospel who respond to Jesus in a right and good and fitting and proper way.  We remember the words of Jesus’ mother, “Do whatever he tells you.” (2:5)  The man did what Jesus told him.  Let us hear Jesus’ words echoing and resonating. Jesus’ words like “Believe in God.  Believe also in me.”  “Abide in me, as I abide in you.”  “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”  “Love one another as I have loved you.” 

Listen to him.  Do whatever he tells you.  Do walk in the light of the light of the world is to join with God in God’s saving work. Not that we save anyone but God invites us to participate in God’s saving work.  “I must work the works of him who sent me” is the line (9:4).  “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (9:5)  “You are the light of the world,” Jesus says at another point. Matt 5:14) To follow this Jesus – to be in Christ – means that we are illuminated to be illuminating through Christ’s creative saving light-giving sight-causing work.  To be sent daily.  Enabled to be light – to be a reflector of the love and light of God so that it’s bouncing off us onto others in what we do and what we say.

Encountering Jesus changes us.  It might make us unrecognizable.  Have you known this?  “Isn’t this the man that used to sit and beg?”  “It is!” “No, but it’s someone like him.”  The man begins to testify, which simply means, he begins to tell his story.  He tells his story as his understanding of what has happened to him in his encounter with Jesus grows.  He’s telling his story throughout this chapter very plainly and very simply.  “I am the man,” he tells the crowd.  “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash.’  Then I went and washed and received my sight.’”  They said to him, ‘Where is he?’  He said, ‘I do not know.’”  How could he know?  He doesn’t even know what Jesus looks like at this point! 

The world can be a crazy mixed up place and the Bible doesn’t shy away from this.  This story we read isn’t all sweetness and light.  There is opposition to the Light in our story.  There is opposition from established religion.  Pharisees.  The miracle happened on the Sabbath.  You are not supposed to knead on the Sabbath and this would include making mud.  They’re forgetting mercy but they know that this man Jesus cannot be from God (although it must be noted that some of their number said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” and they were divided).  There’s hope even for the Pharisee.  In the middle of their division, they ask the formerly blind man, “What do you say about him?  It was your eyes he opened.”  The man replies, “He is a prophet.”  He is one chosen to say and do God’s words and God’s will in the world.  After speaking with the blind man’s parents, the Pharisees go to him again.  There are things that they know.  They know that this man Jesus is a sinner. (24).  They know that this man was entirely in sin (29).  Why else would he have been blind after all? We need to be careful about what we claim to know.  I do not claim to know that anyone is beyond the reach of God’s mercy.  I do not claim to know who is on the inside and who is on the outside.    If we’ve been following Christ for any length of time we know that some of the beliefs and practices that we have held have been challenged and changed.  Following Christ is not about blind conformity to a religious tradition.  When we prayerfully and with love for one another consider questions about who should be welcomed, accepted into membership, ordained, in leadership – we should be open to being corrected.  There is so much I don’t know.  There is so much I could never explain.  We sing about it.  I know not why God’s wondrous grace to me he has made known.  I know not how the Spirit moves convincing us of sin.  I know not when my Lord may come.  But I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he able to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day.  I was blind and now I see, you see.  I have committed my life to him.  In one of my favourite lines in John’s Gospel, speaking of Jesus, the man replies, “I do not know whether he is a sinner.  One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” The spiritually blind are given sight.  How hopeful do I find that! 

I was thinking I wish we knew this man’s name, so I could call him by it rather than “the blind man” or “the formerly blind man.”  There can be meaning in someone not being named in the Bible.  We can put ourselves in his place.  Jesus finds him after he has been driven out by the religious authorities.  Jesus asks “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”  The man, ever truthful, says, “And who is he, sir?  Tell me so that I may believe in him.  Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking to you is he.”  Have you seen him?  Have you heard him?  Listen to the response, “Lord, I believe.”  And he worshiped him.

As we are sent let us remember that we are sent.  “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day,” said Jesus.  We.  Must.  How could we do otherwise when we’ve been given eyes to see everything in the light of Christ?  The man was healed at a place called Sent.  At the end of John’s Gospel Jesus will breathe on his followers and say “Receive the Holy Spirit” and  “As the Father has sent me, so I sending you.”  (20:21)

What is our impetus/motivation for doing good?  The question is not so much “what” but “who”.  The light of the world.  The risen Christ.  The night is far gone.  The day is near.  Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. 

Amen

We continue to pointedly celebrate the risen Christ through these weeks of Eastertide. May we look in wonder as we live in the light of the risen Christ.  Every day.  We are talking about matters of life and death.  In matters of life and death, we have a story to tell and to show.  In matters of life and death, we have a song to sing.   May we be moved to wonder and awe as we consider these words of Jesus, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (6:35)  We’ve already heard “when wine is not just wine” and “when water is not just water.”  Today it is “when bread is not just bread.”  These words come after the 4^th of Jesus’ 7 signs in the Gospel of John.  A large crowd is fed with 5 barley loaves and two fish.  What does this show us about God?  What does this show us about Jesus as bread, Jesus as life?

Sometimes our failures stick with us and this isn’t a bad thing necessarily.  We can learn from them and continue to learn from them.  A group of us from Blythwood were in a small town in the Chapare region of Bolivia 15 years ago.  We were at a church in their courtyard and there were kids everywhere.  We had brought some soccer balls and toys and markers and things like that along and the scene was chaotic.  Children from the village were lined up outside hoping to get in.  After a little while the kids settled down somewhat and our host and guide Ivan asked me if I would teach them a Bible lesson.  I was a little more unprepared than I should have been.  I should have expected such a request and such an opportunity to share with the kids.  I read the story of the boy with the loaves of fish and said some things about it.  My main point that I can remember anyway is that God will provide for you.

I should have done something better with this passage or any other passage.  I would have been better singing “The Fruit of the Spirit” with the kids and talking about the kinds of things God will do in our hearts.  Those kids knew what it was like to not have enough (more than I have ever known) and they weren’t best served by me moralizing this story.  But you learn and we’re not going to moralize this story here this morning.  We see throughout John’s Gospel that things point to other things.  Jesus is not talking about becoming a baby again when he speaks to Nicodemus.  Jesus is not just talking about water or thirst when he speaks to the Samaritan woman at the well.  When we talk about Jesus feeding 5,000 plus people we’re not just talking about food.  We’re not just talking about bread and fish.  We’re not just saying that Jesus will supply our material needs.  Sometimes material needs aren’t supplied after all.  What role do we have to play in trying to ensure that the needs of all are met?

We read the word of God in light of the dying and risen Jesus.  “But these are written so that you may come to believe (or continue to believe) that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” (20:31) That you may come to believe for the first time or that your belief will be deepened.  We looked at the first of Jesus’ signs some weeks ago. Water into wine at a wedding in Cana.  The sign pointed to something else – to a new age of deliverance in Christ.  Something new happening which came out of something old.  When John tells us in v4 that it was near the time of Passover, we can start to think that we’re not just going to be talking about food.  We’re going to be talking about deliverance.  When we read that there was a great deal of grass in the place and the crowd sat down, we are going to think about the one about whom the Psalmist sang makes us to lie down in green pastures.  It’s not simply about the food.  It’s not even simply about the miracle.  It’s about to the One to whom the signs point.

The bread and the fish point to something else.  The talk of bread speaks to hunger.  This group of people in our story knew what it meant to not know where their next meal was coming from.  People who knew what it meant to live a hand-to-mouth existence.  It can be hard for us to know this unless we’ve known food insecurity.  Often we eat for fun or out of boredom (if you’re like me).  Material truths can point us toward spiritual truths.  We are all created to hunger. Bodily hunger can point us to spiritual hunger.  This is at least partly why fasting has been a practice of God’s people for thousands of years.  Hunger is part of the human condition.  “We all have a hunger” is how one song puts it.  “Everybody’s got a hungry heart” is how another song puts it. 

Bread is a good way to point to a deeper meaning because we’re all wired for hunger.  There’s something newborns experience which has been called “The Breast Crawl.”  It’s been described like this: “We are born hungry.  A newborn infant, seemingly helpless in every respect – eyesight undeveloped, gross and fine motor skills at a bare minimum, not even strong enough to hold her head up on her neck – will if left alone, follow a clear and discernible pattern of behaviour which results in that newborn finding her food source – mother’s breast – and initiating feeding.  The baby is literally hardwired in those first few moments of life to do nothing other than use all five senses, every spare ounce of strength, in order to seek food.  Before memory, before words or understanding, before acquiring any skills, before our neural pathways have begun to form rational thought, each of us is born hungry.”

Into this situation steps Jesus with the words, “I am the bread of life.”  We’re talking about more than bread here.  Now you may be saying this is easy for me to say as I’ve never known real hunger or food insecurity or a hand-to-mouth existence.  You may be saying “Aren’t you the one who’s always up there talking about how matter matters and to God the material is not immaterial.”  It’s true, we are not to forget Jesus’s words “I was hungry and you fed me” or his words “You yourselves give them something to eat.”  It’s still not just about food.  If we are feeding people on Saturday afternoons and Sunday afternoons and evenings, that is wonderful and something for which to be thankful.  If we are not introducing people to the Bread of Life and saying “Come and see him!” then we are missing something. 

Let us not miss this.  Let us not be like the crowd who followed Jesus because they ate their fill of the loaves.  People were filled by the way, because life in Christ is life abundant (and again I’m not talking about food but this abundance was pointing to something else).  Some were following Jesus because they were interested in what they could get out of it.  “Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus tells them, “You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” (6:26)  The classic case of “What’s in it for me?” May God save us from presenting the good news of Christ to people primarily in terms of what’s in it for them.  At the same time, people were following and wanting to put Christ in a pigeonhole of familiarity.  “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?  How can he now say ‘I have come down from heaven.’” (John 6:42)  Let us not be people who try to tame Christ by saying things like he was a well-meaning first-century rabbi who had some good things to say.  If we call him Lord, let us not try to make him in our own image.  Christ the loving socialist. Christ the clear-eyed capitalist.  Christ the nationalist.  Christ the chill dude on our dashboard.  Christ the fearsome avenger who’s going to make sure our enemies get theirs.  Let us remember that scene before his arrest when Jesus says “I am he” to that group of followers and soldiers later on in this story, that they all fall to the ground.  The untameable Christ.

What are we to do then?  Listen to Him.  “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.  For it is on him that the Father has set his seal.” (6:27)  The answer comes back from the crowd, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” (6:28)  Jesus answers, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (6:29)  Belief not simply as intellectual assent.  Belief as seeing, hearing, remembering, praising. Belief as devotion to, entrusting one’s life to.  Belief as our desire to abide in, live in, rest in, hunger for.  Hunger for the bread of God which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

We’re talking about real life.  In this is life.  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  In this is love and light and life.  That thing for which we hunger.  That thing which we seek in all kinds of different places.  That thing which we are called here to make the foundational underpinning truth in our life.  I’m saying that thing but I should be saying that person.  That bread.  That bread of life. The one in whom we have a life now.  The one who promises to raise those who believe in him up on the last day.  “Give us this bread always,” says the crowd.  It’s good to know what you want.  They’re still talking about actual bread at this point but in the light of Easter, this request takes on a whole new meaning for us.  Let it be our prayer.  “Lord, give us this bread always.”  It’s good to know what we want.  This was Jesus’ question to people so often, wasn’t it?  What are you looking for?  Whom are you looking for?  What do you want me to do for you?  Give us this bread always, Lord.

Jesus continues to up the ante during this talk.  This bread that I’m talking about is my flesh.  He ups it some more.  “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53).

I don’t believe Jesus said this or that John recorded it so that we could have endless disagreements about transubstantiation.  We’re not just talking about food anymore.  We’re not just talking about the act of eating and drinking.  We’re still talking about a hunger though I think.  May God put that hunger for Christ in our hearts and may we respond to it fittingly and well.  There are many things going on here.  The deliverance which is ours through faith in Christ’s death and resurrection.  This deep abiding with Christ, this deep sharing of his life – compared elsewhere like to a branch that abides in a vine.  This resting, this staying, this being with Christ in indescribable intimacy.  This seeking of Christ and hungering for Christ in his body the Church.  We can’t ignore the references to gathering around the Lord’s Table here.  Matter does indeed matter and gathering around the table of the Lord often and meaningfully together matters.  How wonderful that we’ve had a chance to do this at church twice in the matter of just over a week!  Rowan Williams described the church gathering at a table this way in a sermon – “Here we are then… the people who have not found the nerve to walk away.  And that is perhaps the best definition we could have of the Church.  We are the people who have not had the nerve to walk away; who have not had the nerve to say in the face of Jesus, “All right, I’m healthy.  I’m not hungry.  I’ve finished.  I’ve done.”  We’re here as hungry people, we are here because we cannot heal and complete ourselves; we’re here to eat together at the table of the Lord, as he sits at dinner in this house, and is surrounded by these disreputable, unfinished, unhealthy, hungry, sinful, but at the end of the day almost honest people, gathered with him to find renewal, to be converted, and to change.”

May we count ourselves among that hungry honest number. 

It is not insignificant on this day – Easter Sunday, Resurrection Day – that we come to the tomb along with Mary Magdalene.  She stood near the cross on Friday along with Jesus’ mother, and Mary the wife of Clopas, and the disciple whom Jesus loved.  God’s “I love you” to humanity and to all of creation had been poured out on the cross (literally).  God’s “I love you” not simply a sentiment or a feeling, but an action.  What is love at all if it is not willing the good of another and showing the desire of good for another in word and deed?

Mary had taken those words of Jesus seriously.  Abide in me.  Remain in me.  Stay with me.  We remember the question that had been asked at the beginning of the story when things seemed much more carefree, “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  We want to be where you are!  “Come and see,” was the answer.  In life and in death, Mary wants to be where Jesus is.  Jesus has died.  Jesus has been executed and so Mary goes to the place of death.  Death – the great unknown adventure.  Death – surely the end of all hope.  The end of any expectation of good.  British writer Pico Iyer wrote about death this way,  “One reason [why we cannot seem to learn to die], of course, is that death is the one great adventure of which there are no surviving accounts; death, by definition, is what happens to somebody else. Empiricism (the belief that what we know is derived from experience) falters before death. Yet [death] is more certain than love and more reliable than health.”

Is it more certain than love though, when the love of God is involved?

Mary goes to the place of death and we go with her.  She wants to be with Jesus and this is a good place to be. It’s good to be with Mary from Magdala this morning as we are reminded that it is the first day of the week.  Sure it’s early and it is still dark, and we don’t close our eyes to the darkness or simply wish it away.  We recognize it just as John did at the beginning of his good news and we remember what he said.  “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  We remember how John talked about the beginning of everything.  In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.   All things came into being through him.  On the first day, God spoke something new into creation.  The Word became flesh and lived among us and we mocked him and scorned him and held him in contempt and we killed him.

On Easter Sunday we are pointedly reminded that death does not have the last word.  It may be early.  It may still be dark, but God is doing something new!  There is light enough to see that the stone had been removed from the tomb.  There is light enough to run.  She ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid.”  What else is one to think when one comes upon an empty grave?  As if it weren’t bad enough that they killed him.  Even in death, they won’t leave him alone.  There is so much running on here.  The two disciples set out and were running together.  The disciple whom Jesus loved outruns Peter.  He looks in the tomb and sees the linen wrappings lying there. Peter arrives,  goes in, and sees the linen wrappings lying there, along with the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head rolled up in a place by itself.  Carefully placed.  What kind of grave robber would have done that?  We read that the other disciple then went in and he saw and believed. (20:8)

We’re going to be focussed on hearing today, but I want us to stay with this disciple whom Jesus loves for a little while.  He saw and believed.  They did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead (and none of us fully understand), but he believed.  The matter of belief is of paramount importance for John.  We said from the beginning of Lent that John states the reason that he wrote his account of Jesus is “So that you may come to believe” or “So that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and that through believing you may have life in his name.” (20:31)  Belief in Jesus is not simply a proposition to which we give a cold and analytical assent or dissent.  Belief in the Gospel of John is always a verb.  It’s an action.  It is seeing, hearing, remembering.  Belief is receiving a gift given without measure.  Belief is entrusting one’s life, one’s everything.  Belief is a devotion to, a desire to stay with.  Belief is abiding, staying in, living in, resting in.  Belief is serving, worshiping, praising.  Belief is knowing our need for God, our dependence on God in the same way we depend on water and bread.  Belief is entrusting ourselves to Jesus' care in the same way that sheep are entrusted to a shepherd.  Belief is looking for guidance – a desire to walk in the light of the light of the world.

Underpinning all of this is love.  God’s love for us.  Our love for God.  May it ever be growing.  I heard a preacher once ask “Who loved you to life?”  This is a good question.  Who loved you to life?  From whom did you first know what unconditional love that seeks nothing but your good looks like?  Thank God for that person or those people.  If you’re saying “No one has done that up to this point in my life,” then please get to this church (or we’ll come to you) or another church which is full of the love of God.  Ask God who we are called to “love to life.”  Ask God to give ourselves eyes to see where people are being loved to life all around us.  This week I was at Christie Gardens Long Term Care home to lead two services for the residents on Wednesday morning.  I was waiting for the second service to start and watching a lady who was volunteering to get everyone situated and set up with a hymn book.  Rita leaned down toward a fellow resident and was telling her how she had been unable to help her get to church on Palm Sunday, but had heard that the young lady who “was in charge of the whole place” had been there to help her.  She wasn’t normally there on a Sunday but had been on Palm Sunday and had been able to help.  Rita asked this woman, “Do you know what she said about you?”  “No,” replied her friend.  “She said you were a very nice lady!” The woman beamed.  Loving one another to life.  Our words building up.  Wonderful!

Then the disciples returned to their homes.  Mary weeps.  Mary stood weeping outside the tomb.  Let us stand there with her, whether we have reason to weep this morning or not.  We don’t have to look very far to find people weeping.  People saying, “They have taken away my ___”  Two angels in white are sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying.  They ask her “Woman, why are you weeping?”  The first question of pastoral care or any care that we are called to extend to one another.  “What’s wrong?  What happened?”  Why are you weeping?  “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”  “When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus through her tears, but she did not know that it was Jesus.  It’s the first day of the week!  Jesus asks her the same question, just as God has been asking questions of us all along.  “Where are you?”  “What are you looking for?”  “Do you want to be healed?” 

“Woman,” Jesus asks, “Why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for?”

I want us to hear Jesus’ voice today.  We want to encounter Jesus when we worship together.  Our worship time together is not simply so we can hear some good words and good music (though we like good words and good music).  May our times of worship together be times of encounter with God.  They say seeing is believing, but we may see things very differently.  We may not be able to see because we’re blinded by tears.  We may say we’re seeing very clearly with eyes of faith this morning.  We may say we see with a jaded or even jaundiced view – a world-weariness that says there is nothing new under the sun.

Mary can’t see and she thinks Jesus is the gardener.  When is a gardener, not just a gardener?  When we remember how badly things once went in a garden when we thought we were better off on our own.  When we consider the result of that garden action was that we were going to have to deal with thorns and thistles (Gen 3:18) and don’t we know all about thorns and thistles?  This particular gardener is here to make all things right.  Hear the song swelling in the background as we’re invited to hear it this morning.  Hear the song that goes “No more let sins and sorrows grow/Nor thorns infest the ground/He comes to make His blessings flow/Far as the curse is found”  This is the Good News of Easter Morning!  “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away,” says Mary through her tears.

Jesus calls her name.  “Mary.”

Could we hear Jesus call our name this morning if we just stopped and listened?  I’m going to play an African-American spiritual called “Hush, Hush, Somebody’s Calling My Name.”  May we hear Jesus calling us.  (Play song)

Mary joins a long line of people in John’s Gospel who give the good and right and fitting and proper response to Jesus.  “My teacher.”  My Lord and my God.  My teacher.  “Don’t hold onto me,” Jesus tells her, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”  First time he’d ever said anything like that.  My Father.  Your Father.  Adoption into the family of God.  Participation in and fellowship with the Father, Son and Spirit.  We have been granted an all-access pass into the life of the Divine.  A whole new way to relate to God through the Holy Spirit of the risen Christ.  Mary Magdalene becomes the first to see the risen Jesus and the first to go and tell.  She’s given a job to do.  “Oh Lord what shall I do?” was the question we heard in the song.  Jesus tells her.  “But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” (17)  Mary goes and tells.  She becomes the apostle to the apostles.  “Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.’” (18)

Have we seen him?  Have we heard him?  Let us remember together some of the things he’s said to us.  “Come and see.”  “I am the light of the world.” “I am the good shepherd.”  “Abide in me as I abide in you.”  “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you.  I do not give as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” “Love one another just as I have loved you.  By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.”

The defeat of sin and death.  New life in the risen Christ.  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift. Amen  

You can make of that what you will.  My friend told me he didn’t reply but later on thought, “Are you sure you really want to find God?”  In other words, do we really know what we are asking?  Are we really prepared for what we might find when we find God, or when we are found by God?

This is a serious matter and we want to take this desire seriously.  This is the request that came from a group of Greeks who were in Jerusalem for the Passover festival.  “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  Are we saying the same thing this morning?  If so we are in a good place to look at him.  This is what we have been doing throughout the weeks of Lent.  The light of the world.  The one in whom we have known and know grace upon grace.  The bringer of a new age.  The bringer of new life. The giver of the gift of new life and the gift of the Holy Spirit of God.  The son of God.  The son of man.  The king of Israel.  The lamb of God.  “Look, here is the lamb of God!” we heard from John the Baptist.  Let’s hear some more good news.  “Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion.  Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!”  Do not be afraid dear followers of Christ.  Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!

So let us look and consider together.  They call this the triumphal entry in our NRSV Bibles, though it was a pretty low-key entry in terms of grand entries or grand parades.  Let us not go from the triumph of Palm Sunday to the triumph of Resurrection Sunday and miss the fact that this story is happening in the shadow of the cross.  Let us not miss Good Friday and why we call it good.  “Ride on ride on in majesty,” we sing, “In lowly pomp ride on to die.” Let us now miss the outpouring of love and mercy at the cross that shows God’s glory.

What kind of king is this Jesus?  A crowd from Jerusalem comes out to meet Jesus, as people would do to greet a visiting ruler.  They take branches of palm trees.  Interestingly, John is the only gospel to specify the types of branches they take.  “Hosanna!” They shout.  Save, we pray! “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord – the King of Israel!”

We want to see Jesus this morning.  What kind of king?  The thing about palm branches for the 1^st century Jerusalemite – they were a symbol of nationalism.  They’re not now.  They have come for Christians over the years, to mean a symbol of praise and adoration for Jesus with which we mark the beginning of Holy Week.  We hang onto them for a while.  In some traditions, we hang on to them for a year, burn them, and use the ashes for Ash Wednesday the following year.  Palm fronds have taken on a new meaning.  Before all this, palm branches were a symbol of national strength and military victory.  They had been waved by crowds greeting Judas Maccabeus some more than 150 years earlier.  He was the military leader that had thrown off the yoke of Seleucid oppression (celebrated at Channukah).  Judas “The Hammer” as he was known.   

Jesus takes action.  We’re familiar with symbolic action.  We take symbolic action every time we signal our server at a restaurant that we would like the bill.  Prophetic action is a symbolic action that has a spiritual significance.  I like to think there is prophetic action going on every Saturday at Trinity Square through the OOTC season.  Truths are being signified.  Truths like everyone has value and is valued as guests are welcomed.  Truths like no one should have too much and no one should have too little as food and clothing and other goods are shared.  Jesus takes prophetic action by finding a donkey’s colt – a small young donkey – and riding into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey.

This is our King.  I have to say something about riding a donkey.  There is little stately or noble about it.  If you get to know me you get to know that I have an affinity for donkeys (ducks too but they’re not relevant here).  I just really like donkeys for some reason.  Fourteen years ago, Nicole and I had the chance to visit Petra in Jordan.  Near the entrance were the guys on the horses.  Very cool looking.  A little further in were the camels.  You could ride with the horses or ride with the camels.  At the end of the route were the donkeys.  We ended up riding the donkeys.  I was worried that the poor donkey wouldn’t be able to hold me.  I expressed this to the man in charge of the donkey taxi service, at which point he called out “Get this man a mule!”  He was joking (there weren’t any mules around) and the donkey held me well.  The thing about donkeys is, that the cavalry doesn’t come in riding donkeys.  They don’t really gallop.  They hardly even canter.  Walking is more their thing.  Those upon whom we usually look to save us do not come to our rescue riding donkeys.  

Our Prince of Peace comes riding on a donkey. What does nationalism and national interest have to do with the kingdom of God?  In a few days time, Jesus will be saying, “My kingdom is not from this world.  If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.  But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”  Empires of this world rise and fall.  There’s a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley which illustrates this well called “Ozymandias”:

I met a traveller from an antique land,/ Who said – “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone/ Stand in the desert… Near them on the sand,/ Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,/ And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,/ Tell that its sculptor well those passions read/ Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things,/ The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;/ And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;/ Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!./ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/ Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare/ The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Will empire building save us; or national military strength; national economic strength?  His Kingdom is not from this world.  In a world where cross-wearing politicians announce proudly things like “Never forget, we’re steeped in the blood of patriots who overthrew the most powerful empire in the world,” our King comes into town riding on a young donkey.  What does it mean to live in the shadow of the cross? 

“You see, you can do nothing.  Look, the world has gone after him.”  This from some contemptuous Pharisees.  Let us put aside contempt.  Let us ask God to help us put aside contempt for anyone.  There is far too much contempt in the world.  These Pharisees are looking contemptuously at this localized scene as Jesus.  The events which will take place will of course be for the world.  The world will indeed go after Jesus.  It’s wonderful to see this represented in our church, to which we have come from all over the world.

“Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks.”  Generally thought of as “God-fearers.”  People who hadn’t gone full convert but were definitely interested in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and would come to Jerusalem for events like Passover.  These Greeks stand in a long line of people in the Gospel of John who make the good and right and fitting and proper response to Jesus.  We’ve heard some of them.  Following.  Asking him, “Rabbi, where are you staying?”  Taking Jesus up on the invitation to come and see.  Jesus’ mother saying, “Do whatever he tells you.” (2:5)  The woman of Sychar saying, “Sir, give me this water…” (4:15)  A man delivered from blindness saying, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” (9:25)   These Greeks make the good and right and fitting and proper response to this King.  May it be ours every day.  “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  They come to Philip (the guy with the Greek name).  Philip tells Andrew and they tell Jesus. We want to pay attention to what Jesus says now.  In ch 12 we have the last words spoken by Jesus publicly before his trial and death.  He will be speaking in chapters 13 to 17 but they will be words to his followers and a prayer (ch. 17).  What do we find out when we wish to see and hear Jesus?  Jesus doesn’t say something like “How great that you were looking for me!” or “Well done on looking for me!” He speaks of death and life.  He speaks of dying to live.  He says, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.  Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.” (12:24-26)

There’s an expression in the culture, “ride or die.”  It comes from hip-hop and describes someone to whom you are loyal, or who is loyal to you.  “My wife is my ride or die.”  “I’m your ride or die.”  That kind of thing.  “I always ride with mine,” said Angel Reese of the LSU Tigers women’s basketball team in order to express her devotion.  The thing about riding with our King as we profess to ride with Him, it’s not a matter of ride or die.  It’s a matter of ride and die.  Jesus isn’t saying “Hate your life,” the way we might in a bad situation or maybe even despair say “I hate my life.”  Jesus is not saying that we are to take no enjoyment in our lives.  Jesus is describing what is perhaps the biggest paradox of them all in life in him.  Sin and death will be overcome by the death of the sinless one.  Someone has put it like this: “Isn’t death, always, a defeat, rather than a glory? Not always, as Jesus’ dying ‘grain-of wheat’’ picture… illustrates perfectly… What looks like the grain’s demise is in fact its harvest.  So Jesus’ Cross.  What looks like the perfect proof against Jesus’ authenticity  - his capital punishment – proves… to be the supreme argument for, and the major display of, God’s profound love for the world.”

To follow Jesus in the way of the cross is to live with arms outstretched and hands open. It’s one or the other.  Life or death.  Hands open or hands clenched and grasping.  Blessing or cursing.  The shadow of the cross shows the ways of the world for what they are.  Cut-throat competition.  The profit motive as the highest motive. Economic interest above all.  National interest above all.  Self-interest above all.  Grasping and holding onto as much as you can get above all.   Honour from people as the highest goal, and surely the most important thing happening in the world two weeks ago was happening at the Dolby Centre in beautiful downtown Los Angeles.  Right?  The whole world goes after the Oscars.

I’m not saying don’t watch the Oscars.  I watched some of them and have watched “American Fiction” and “Anatomy of a Fall” since.  I’m talking about the voices that would purport to tell us what the most important worthy-of-our-attention/devotion are in this world.  We’re talking right now about the most important thing in the world.  Our King who shows all other empires which would claim our allegiance for what they are, including the empire of the self. 

“Where I am, there will my servant be also,” says Jesus, and may we say, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your will.”  Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls a man (or woman), he bids us come and die.  Death to self for many followers of Christ has meant death.  What does it mean for me and you today?  Death to the myth of self-sufficiency.  Death to bowing down to other gods.  Death to conceit.  Death to selfishness.  Death to self-abasement.  Death to pride.  Death to isolation. 

In so dying we are given the gift of life.  Life lived in communion and fellowship with God now and always.  “Walk while you have the light,” Jesus said.  “If you walk in the darkness you don’t know where you are going.”  Life lived in the light of the world, which even death did not overcome.  We wish to see Jesus.  This is our King.  Thanks be to God, as we follow him to the cross, for his indescribable gift.  

When is water not just water?  When we’re talking about the gift of God.  The Holy Spirit of God is a gift freely given without measure to all who ask.

A chance encounter at a well that wasn’t chance at all.  It is not by chance that we’re hearing these words today.  Jesus does not approach randomly or casually.  An unlikely scenario.  Misunderstanding and understanding.  Boundary crossing.  Acceptance.  God revealed.   A new purpose revealed.  These are some of the things that are going on in the story that we heard this morning.  Let us take a look at this story this morning and see what God may have to say to our hearts. 

Last week we read about Jesus and his followers attending a wedding up north in Galilee, and then returning to regular life in Capernaum.  After that, John writes on Jesus going up to Jerusalem at Passover.  While there Jesus meets a pharisee called Nicodemus.  Jesus speaks of a gift.  New life.  New birth.  Jesus tells him that one sees the kingdom of God by being born from above, born of the Spirit.  Not understanding, Nicodemus wonders asks, “How can anyone be born after having grown old?”  Jesus tells him about the Son of Man being lifted up so that anyone who believes in him may have eternal life, life that is from above, from God.  Life reconciled and in communion with God.  After this. Jesus decides to head north and go home for a while.  This is how chapter 4 starts.

We start the story with Jesus in an everyday situation.  He’s at a well at noon.  He’s tired.  “Give me a drink.”  The first line of dialogue in the scene. 

This woman is not in a good place that day at noon.  While it’s conjecture, it’s thought that the reason she was coming to the well at noon was because she didn’t feel welcome coming to the well with the other women of the town in the cool of the morning or the end of the day.  The fact that she’s living with a man who is not her husband meant she would have been considered something of an outcast.  The fact that a rabbi is talking to her at all was surprising.  The fact that a Jewish man was asking to share what she used to draw the water was shocking.  Jews and Samaritans did not share things in common.  Jews and Samaritans lived in segregation. The question, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” is a good one.  In this story we see Jesus breaking down barriers.  We see Jesus signifying that people are more important than the barriers and walls that we set up around ourselves.

We’re talking about the importance of symbols throughout these weeks in John’s Gospel.  There’s an importance to this story happening at a well.  New relationships are born at wells.  Life-changing things happen at wells in the Bible.  Isaac met his wife Rebekah at a well.  Jacob met his wife Rachel at a well.  Here new life is happening at the well.  Jesus is crossing boundaries.  He’s breaking down walls.  He’s destroying barriers.  He’s sitting down.  He’s taking the time to sit where people who are labelled such as he is (Jewish/rabbi) are not supposed to sit. 

Jesus is offering a free gift.  “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’”  Living water meant water that flowed, the kind you would find in a stream or river.  Reading these words from our vantage point we know that Jesus is not just talking about water.  “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give will never be thirsty.  The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” (4:13-14)

In the context of this chapter, I believe that we best understand Jesus to be speaking here of the Holy Spirit.  “God is spirit,” Jesus will say, “And those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (4:24)  God gives the Spirit freely without measure.  All we need to do is ask.  If you knew, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.  A spring of water gushing up to eternal life.  Eternal life – that we might know God.  That we may be made new and renewed with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  That we may be given strength.  That our shame may be taken away.  That our fears may be stilled.  This is the gift of God given freely and without measure.

I know we can be suspicious about gifts that are offered for free.  I remember taking the subway daily at Yonge and Eglinton.  At times there would be people promoting a breakfast bar or something similar handing out free breakfast bars!  I remember the crowds hurrying by, largely ignoring the free gift.  We know that very often, something offered to us for free has a price attached to it later on.  We’ve signed on recently with the Sundance streaming service.  We signed on for a free 30-day trial.  We must be aware of course, that they will start charging $8.99 after 30 days unless we take steps to cancel.  We can be mistrustful of free offers.  I remember us holding a garage sale once.  I decided that I would bring the Weber kettle grill to the driveway and grill up hotdogs for passersby to enjoy.  No one wanted the free hot dogs!  We can be mistrustful of free offers.

Or perhaps we don’t want to ask.  We don’t like to ask for help if we think too much of ourselves.  Pride gets in the way.  I’m doing ok, we say.  I can handle it (life) on my own.  Or we think too little of ourselves to ask.  I don’t want to be a bother, we say.  Why should God care about little me?  Who am I, after all, that the Lord of heaven and earth should make such an offer to me?  Who are you? 

You are his beloved creation, and he is inviting you to be his beloved child.  We may ask because God has asked first.  Asking can put us in a lower position when it comes to social hierarchy.  We can be too proud to ask for help.  God has already asked.  Jesus started this whole conversation with a request.  It wasn’t a command.  “Give me a drink.”  God has already asked the question.  Where are you?  What are you looking for?  What do you want me to do for you?

And he has come to us, looking for us, running after us with His goodness. 

I want life in you.  Let that be our answer.  I want to be filled with your Holy Spirit, living water that will become in me a spring gushing up to eternal life.  The Holy Spirit is not just for our benefit of course.  The ancient promise from God was “I will bless you and make you a blessing.”  The goodness of the Holy Spirit in us is not just for our benefit, but that we might be like holy fountains, gushing with the goodness of God.  I like to think of us as holy garden hoses, filled with the living water of the Holy Spirit so that it’s spraying everywhere we go. 

Isn’t this what we want in our lives.  When we are at our best, do we not want to make a difference in other people’s lives?  Do we not want to be a help?  Do we not want people and places to be better for us having been present in them and with them?  Do we not long for this kind of purpose?  That we might be someone who helps.  That we might be someone who speaks a word of encouragement or a word of blessing or a word of the truth of God’s love into a situation.  Last Monday we had our second Revitalization Team meeting with CBOQ and our cohort.  We were talking about discernment and it was a good meeting.  Part of discernment is listening for God to speak to us.  Cid Latty, one of the leaders, told us this, “I have never heard anything bad from God.  I have never heard God say ‘I don’t love you’ or ‘You’re not good enough’ or ‘You should just give up.’  I have only ever heard good things from my Father.”  What an amazing word of encouragement!  What a reminder of how we are loved by God!

There’s no hidden cost or price to be paid with the gift of new life and the living water of the Holy Spirit.  Someone has said this when it comes to the promises of new life and the Spirit in John 3-4:  “Rebirth and Living Water are being offered… not to persons who have passed qualifying exams but, in both cases, to proved spiritual incompetents like the rest of us. Life with God, Jesus has taught us again and again, is not for spiritual champions…“Blessed are the poor in spirit” (not the spiritually rich), “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” as Jesus began his First Inaugural (Matt. 5:3 at the very head of his Sermon on the Mount). The gospel is for admitted failures, for confessed incompetents, in short, for people like all of us when we are honest. The incomprehension and incompetence, almost the rudeness and even perhaps the slight contempt detectible in both Nicodemus and the Samaritan Woman may all be intended by John to say to readers: Jesus’ promises are for problematic people; get used to it; be grateful.”

And ask.  We talked last week about Mary’s good and fitting and proper response to Jesus.  “Do whatever he tells you.”  This reminded us of her earlier good and fitting and proper response, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.”  In our story, the Samaritan woman gives the good and right and proper response to Jesus who is before he.  She asks.  “Sir, give me this water…”

May that be our prayer today and every day.  “Lord, Jesus, give me this water, that it might become in me a spring of water, gushing up to eternal life.”  The Samaritan woman doesn’t fully get it. She’s still thinking on the level of the literal and not having to come back to the well.  That’s ok though, we don’t fully get it either.  The important thing is the asking.  She asks. Sir, give me this water.  She ends up going back to her city and the water is gushing up from her.  “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!  He cannot be the Messiah can he?” (4:29)  Come and see.  Come and see a man who knows the depth of my heart and loves me!  “They left the city and were on their way to him.”  The people of Sychar were coming to see!

Jesus is the bringer of new life and a new age.  This woman of Samaria has been held in contempt.  Jesus doesn’t look on her as a label.  He looks on her as someone who was created for the Spirit of the living God to inhabit.  Living water.   Jesus looks on her as someone who is able to spread this news to a whole other people group, starting with her village.  Starting with where she lives.  What does Jesus expect of us who are indwelt by the same Spirit?  What does Jesus expect of us where we live?  What will Jesus enable in us where we live if we say “Sir give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty…” 

The woman has gone to tell her village some truth – “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!”  There’s some hyperbole here – Jesus didn’t tell her everything she’d ever done.  She’s excited to have met him though and speaks of a deep deep truth.  Jesus knows everything she has ever done and loves her.  Jesus knows everything I have ever done and loves me.  Jesus knows everything you have ever done and loves you.  He cannot be the Messiah, can he?

Can he?  Yes, he can.  The one who has made it possible for his followers to worship in Spirit and in Truth.  The one who has made it possible for his followers to be filled to gushing with the living water of His Spirit.  The one whose truth is redeeming love – reconciling restoring love that crosses boundaries and enables the same reconciling restoring healing love in us.  He cannot be the Messiah, can he?  Come and see!  This is the Christ, friends, that we follow.  

A wedding, while a time of great celebration and all the things that weddings are, is a fairly normal part of life.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying that weddings are mundane or every day.  They’re significant events in some people’s lives.  I remember once talking to someone about possibly using the church to have a wedding one summer.  They named the date and I asked what time they were considering.  The prospective groom said “The afternoon.  Is there a wedding going on that morning too?”  I thought “How many weddings do you think we’re having here?!” 

A wedding is significant, but we get the idea that there may be something more significant going on when we read the beginning of John’s wedding story.  “On the third day, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.  Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.”  A fairly normal part of village life and the lives of neighbouring villages.  Cana was located about 8 miles north of Nazareth.  Everyone is invited to the wedding.

When Jesus is involved, of course, things take on a new significance.  Light is not just light.  Water is not just something from a well.  Bread is not just bread.  This is one of those stories which I think is still fairly well-known in our culture today.  Water into wine.  It’s been used by people to defend or denounce drinking.  It’s been used by wedding officiants to talk about how it is a good thing to have Jesus involved in marriages.  Nothing wrong with that.   There’s something much more significant going on here when we look at this particular wedding story.  “Do you believe because I saw you under a fig tree?” is what Jesus had asked Nathaniel a little earlier.  “You will see greater things than these.  Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Heaven and earth coming together in this new age that has been inaugurated in Christ.  This is the first of seven stories of signs told by John.  They’re told by John as part of the whole purpose of John’s Gospel – so that you might come to believe or continue to believe, and that through believing you may have life in his name.  So that you might come to step out in faith and trust and follow this Jesus of Nazareth.  This is the first sign.  It’s followed by healings; by a group of over 5,000 people being fed; of Jesus walking on water; of a man who had died being given life.

New life.  New life in Christ.  We’re not just talking about a wedding.  This happens quite a bit in John.  Jesus speaks of being born from above and the question comes back to him “How can someone be born again?” and we realize that Jesus is not talking about returning to our mother’s womb (come on!).  Jesus speaks with a Samaritan woman of living water at a well and all of a sudden we realize he’s not just talking about being thirsty.  There’s a whole other level going on. Someone has said of these sign stories “Heaven is opened when the transformational power of God’s love breaks into the present world.”   We’re going to be talking about how this happens throughout these weeks of Lent right up to the point where heaven and earth come together at the cross. There’s a whole other level going on here.  And speaking of the cross, one of the women who is mentioned there is only mentioned one other time in John’s Gospel and that is right here.  The mother of Jesus. 

There is a problem here in the story (and what’s a story without some sort of problem?).  When the wine gave out.  The way this is written is to describe the wine running out as something that happens in the regular course of events.  It’s not “But suddenly the wine ran out” or “Bom bom bom – then the wine ran out!” It’s “When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’”  This is the problem and it’s a problem.  The wine is going to run out.  We’re not just talking about wine now of course.  We’ve been talking about questions that are common to the human condition no matter where we stand on matters of faith.  What are you looking for?  In what or whom do you hope?  Here we have a situation that is common to the human condition.  The wine is going to run out.  We will know loss.  We will know regret.  We will know shame.  None of us are getting out of this alive (and aren’t you glad you came to church this morning?).

Here’s the thing about shame in our story. If you’re from certain cultures you know that running out of food or drink at a party is just not acceptable.  It brings shame to the family.  It’s a bad way to start married life.  Mary informs Jesus.  Does she expect him to do something about it?  It would seem so.  Is she requesting something miraculous?  Possibly.  We don’t know for sure. There were caterers who could handle that sort of thing – replenishment of wine stocks at a multi-day wedding (because these weddings were multi-day affairs).  We do know this.  Jesus is about taking shame away.  Jesus is about acting in every every day.  There is something working on a whole other level here.

You see it in Jesus’ response.  There is an ambiguity in the translation of Jesus’ answer to his mother.  Our NRSV Bible says “What concern is that to you and me?”  It can be translated “What do you have to do with me?” which speaks to the relationship between them.  This is not simply a mother talking to her son.  It’s a mother talking to the Son.  “My hour is not yet come,” reminds us of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:1 – “Father, the hour has come to glorify your son…” It might also be seen as a question.  “Has not my hour to go out into the world come?”  

The hour for something has come.  The time for the first sign.  It’s time for the first sign that John gives as to who Jesus is in terms of the Word having become flesh, the Lamb of God, the Son of God, the Son of Man. 

He’s the bringer of a new age.  New life.  How do we respond?  Remember in ch 1 how those first followers responded? Here we have Mary representing a faithful/faith-filled response to the reality of the living Word of God.  In much the same way she told the angel Gabriel “Here am I the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word” she says to the servants “Do whatever he tells you.” The mother of Jesus represents the response of faith.  The response that the Gospel of John is inviting us to.  What is Jesus telling us to do in the Gospel of John? “Believe in the father, believe also in me.”  “Abide in me.”  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  “Woman, here is your son,” to his mother from the cross.  To the disciple whom he loved “Here is your mother.”   Here is the new family of faith into which you’re adopted through me. 

Jesus is the bringer of a new age.  Six stone jars of water, each one holding 20 to 30 gallons.  6X25 gallons is 150 gallons which is 567 litres which is 756 bottles of wine if we were picturing 750 ml bottles which is 63 cases and I wish I could have stacked 63 cardboard boxes which wine comes in.  But you can imagine a wall 6 boxes high and 10 across with three left over.

We’re not just talking about wine.  That’s an insane amount of wine to introduce at the tail end of a village wedding.  When is wine not just wine?  When the new age has begun; new life is here; God’s grace will be known in a whole new way; and that’s a lot of grace!

“I came that they might have life,” Jesus said, meaning his sheep, “and have it abundantly.”  Abundant grace.  Grace upon grace.  The prophets had spoken of it.  The lavishness of God’s grace in the age to come.

Joel 3:18 – “In that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine, the hills shall flow with milk, and all the stream beds of Judah shall flow with water; a fountain shall come forth from the house of the LORD…”

Jeremiah 31:13 – “Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry, I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.”

John doesn’t spend any time on when or how it happened any more than he spends time explaining how exactly the Word became flesh.  The point is that spiritual meaning is found in the realities of life.  The chief steward tastes the water that has become wine and says “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” God saves the best for last.  The usual order of life is reversed in the Kingdom of God.  In the new age inaugurated in Christ, the order of life is reversed.  Mourning is turned to dancing.  Sorrow is turned to joy.  The rich go away empty.  The self-sufficient go away empty.  Those who are in need are filled with good things.  Those who know their need for God, their need for grace are filled with good things. 

This man, this God, this Jesus is the source of life.  Eternal life.  What is eternal life?  Jesus will say in a prayer to his Father which we’ll look at in a few weeks.  “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (17:3)

That we may know God.  “I want to know you,” we sing.  We are no longer simply talking about wine or even just a miracle for that matter.  The thing is we can discount miracles.  A miracle is no guarantee of faith.  Even someone coming back from the dead is no guarantee of faith.  Anything can be explained away, after all.  The one who says “If only it could be proven in some way” is not in a position to take the walk of faith and no proof will suffice – not even someone coming back from the dead (as we know).  The invitation to faith is ever before us, and it remains in the answer to the question that someone once asked, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  The invitation to faith is still “Come and see.”  “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” Come and see a man who knows me to the depth of my heart and loves me.  Let us hear the words of the Psalmist as we hear the invitation to Jesus’ table.  Taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him.

There’s an interesting postscript to this story.  His disciples believed in him.  They trusted him.  They entrusted themselves to him.  We read. “After this, he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples, and they remained there a few days.”  They remained with him.  Same word as abide or stay as we’ve heard it and will hear it. “ Abide in me as I abide in you.”  Life returns to normal.  They stay together.  We will get up tomorrow morning and make breakfast and make the lunches and walk the dog and do some laundry and go to work and go to school and go to our appointments and do all the things that we do as we wait.  We wait for Jesus’ hour to come too, don’t we?  In the meantime, we trust that we too will find spiritual meaning in our everyday.  Instances of heaven opened and the transforming power of God’s love being poured into our lives, and into us.  God speaking to us in God’s word.  God speaking to us in song.  The wonder of a March sunset.  Buds blooming.  Robins singing.  Praying together.  Coming around a table together.  Let us pray that God gives us eyes of faith to see and hearts full of the hope that is ours. May this be true for us all. 

Amen

We spoke and sang last week about letting our lights shine.  Letting the Light shine in and through us.  This is of course something that we are called to do together.  Letting the light shine together.  We have heard about Jesus so far in John’s Gospel and we have heard about John whom we call “the Baptist.”  The first witness.  From v 19 to 51 in the 1^st chapter of John, we are given an account of four days.  The first day we hear John speak about the one who was coming after him.  The second day, we read that John saw Jesus coming toward him, and John declares, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  Declarative preaching. Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  Christ-centred preaching is a vital practice.  “It is the Lord!” we heard not long ago from the end of John’s Gospel.  Jesus is always the message.  John lays the message out.  “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.  I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’” (32-34)

Here is the Lamb of God!  Here is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit – the one who has given the gift of the Holy Spirit within us!  Here he is as he’s walking toward John.  Here he is as he walks on by. Let us put ourselves right in the middle of this story, dear church because here we have the beginning of the church in the Gospel of John.  In order to understand who we are and what we are to be about, we go back to our beginnings.  We return continually to the one who is our beginning and our end.  Listen to how he is described in our text and remember that thrum of excitement which came from personal contact with the Lamb of God; the Messiah; the one about whom Moses in the law and all the prophets wrote; the Son of God; the King of Israel; the Son of Man.

I love this scene as John describes it.  Two disciples of John the Baptist are standing with him.  They are interested in what John is proclaiming.  They are engaged in what John is proclaiming.  They are having a meeting.  Let us not neglect meeting together in places where Jesus is proclaimed.  We want to encounter him.  We don’t want to miss him as he is walking by.  John is standing with his two students and Jesus walks by and John tells the truth along with an invitation to look.  “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”  The message is heard.  The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.  The following came about after the speaking and the hearing.

What can I say about what hearing the good news of Jesus proclaimed has meant for me?  What it meant in my young life to hear about God’s love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, hope, peace, joy week after week.  What did it mean in those times when Jesus seemed distant, and that was because of me, not because of him?  What has it meant in your own life to hear the one who calls himself the truth proclaimed?  Let us not neglect the proclamation nor the hearing – even if it needs to be largely virtual depending on our circumstances.  Let it not solely be virtual unless it has to be due to our circumstances.  In any case, we are thankful for the technology which allows us to gather in that way.  When we gather, the good news of Jesus may be proclaimed from unexpected places.  The good news of the Lamb of God.  The good news of our shepherd.  A few weeks ago, here in church before our prayer time with the children, I was talking to them about breakfast.  We were looking at the story of Jesus making a fish breakfast for his followers on the beach.  I asked the kids who made breakfast for them, expecting them to say a parent.  What was the first answer?  God!  I said “You went right to the heart of the matter. child!”  God our provider, our sustainer.  “You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing,” as the Psalmist sang. 

“It is the Lord,” as one of those followers said before that beach breakfast.  It’s Jesus who is worthy of our attention, our devotion, our adoration.  “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” They begin to follow, Andrew and this second disciple who is not named.  Jesus turned and saw them following. Jesus asked them a question.  We talked last week about the questions that are being posed to us when we gather together with God.  Our God is one of questions.  There is an element of grace in asking a question sincerely.  Not in an accusatory way or with a hidden agenda, but in a way in which we invite one another to share what is going on in our hearts.  When humanity went wrong, the first words that God spoke were a question.  “Where are you?”  God is always looking for us and we see that in our passage with Jesus today.  Where are you?  When a blind man calls out to Jesus “Have mercy on me” from the side of the road, Jesus stops.  Jesus asks him a question.  What do you want me to do for you?  When it comes to caring for those around us and being able to shine the light of Christ, what questions might we be asking?

Jesus asks, “What are you looking for?”  It’s a good question.  There’s a certain restlessness around; a certain unease; a certain restless searching.  Before we say things like “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for,” we need to consider what it is we’re looking for.

So what are we looking for?  Happiness?  Freedom?  How do we define those things?  Peace?  The good life?  To be a better person?   Purpose?  Meaning? A path?  A career path?  A place to live?  Belonging?  Connection? What are we looking for?  Have we found it?  Who might we tell about it?  (more on this in the next segment)

They said, “Rabbi (which translated means Teacher), where are you staying?”  This is an excellent question.  Let it be one of the questions of our lives when it comes to Jesus.  We’re not simply talking not about where Jesus is physically located.  We’re asking the question “What does it mean to stay with Jesus”  What does it mean to live in Christ?  Our homes say a lot about us.  What we surround ourselves with may say a lot about us.  What does it mean to be at home with Jesus?  “Come and see,” is the invitation.  It’s not an argument.  It’s not up to me or anyone else to offer up an irresistible argument or destroy someone else’s argument.  It’s not something for which I’m called to offer irrefutable proof.  It’s an invitation from Jesus.  “Come and see.”  Can anything good come out of Nazareth?  Come and see!  Can anything good come out of the motley crew that makes up a church?  Come and see!  It’s not just us you see.  Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done.  Come and see a man who knows everything about me to the depths of my heart – and loves me.

Andrew and the other disciple came and saw.  They stayed.  Same word as abide when we’ll hear Jesus say “Abide in me as I abide in you.”  Just like a branch abides in the vine and we’re not just talking about viticulture now.  Stay with me as I stay with you, says Jesus.  This is what it means to be found in Jesus or finding Jesus – both are happening in our story.  Jesus is finding people, people are saying “We have found him!”  God plays a role in our finding us and we play a role in being found.  We hold these two truths together lest we think it was all up to us or it was all up to God.  These two disciples give the good and right and fitting response and may we all do the same.  They went and remained with him all day, until about four o’clock in the afternoon.  I want to be where you are.  May that be our prayer.  I want to know you.  I want to be made like you. 

I want to know what you’re like.  We never come to an end of finding out what Jesus is like.  Spending time with Jesus in the Gospels is one of the ways in which we find out.  We find out things like Jesus moved toward people with compassion and service.  The “Jesus, He Gets Us” campaign ran an ad during the Superbowl this year which caused a lot of discussion and controversy and outrage (and really outrage is so often our default position these days).  No matter what our opinion on the effectiveness/cost/portrayal of such a message, they spoke a deep truth about Jesus as they depicted foot washing.  An act of love and service.  Reading an article about this I came across this story about Tony Campolo, an American speaker/pastor/sociologist/follower of Christ:

“Tony Campolo, …once found himself eating at a late-night diner when a group of prostitutes came in:

One of the women, named Agnes, said her birthday was the next day and observed that she’d never had a birthday party in her life. Campolo overheard the conversation and asked a man behind the counter if the women came in every night. He said yes.

The next night, Campolo brought some simple decorations, hung them up and threw Agnes a surprise party in that diner. She cried tears of joy and ended up taking the cake home, untouched. It was the first birthday cake she had ever received. After she left, he prayed with the people who remained in the diner, and one of the employees asked him what kind of church he belonged to.

Campolo’s answer was perfect: He said he belonged to the kind of church that gives a party for a prostitute at 3:30 a.m. Not, obviously, because he approved of prostitution. But because he cared for Agnes. He threw that party for her before he knew how she’d respond before he knew whether she’d leave the streets and before he’d had a chance to say anything at all to her about Jesus. The party itself spoke to her more loudly than any words could have.

We are called to show Jesus.  The first Gospel that many people will read is us.  We are called to tell and invite others on this follow.  Our families.  Andrew starts with his brother.  Jesus finds Philip and says “Follow me.”  Those in our circles of care.  Philip finds Nathanael and says “Come and see.”  We do this individually, and we do this together.  We make the invitation, “Come and see.”

Be our guest.  This is what we are planning to call something which we feel God is placing it on our hearts to do here at Blythwood.  Be Our Guest.  We plan to create a hospitable space here at Blythwood on eight Sunday evenings starting in March.  It’s a space to invite people who are interested in discussing the deepest questions of life, no matter one’s faith perspective.  What are we looking for?  In what or whom do we hope?  What does connection mean?  Led by our brother Mike Ariza whose chaplaincy call leads him to this kind of questions and discussions all the time. Dinner will be shared.  Open, accepting, honest conversational space will be shared.  Pray for those who will be there.  Pray for those you might invite. 

The invitation ultimately is to daily live in the one who promised that, in him, we would see heaven opened and angels ascending and descending.  In other words, the one who is the bridge between infinite and the finite, the forever and today.  The one in whom we live in/dwell in/abide with the Divine.  The Lamb of God.  The chosen one.  The king of Israel.  The Son of Man.  The Son of God.  Jesus from Nazareth.  Our inviting teacher/Lord/God.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.

He came.  How could such a thing be?

We grow up.  We get to know things.  This may take away from our sense of wonder.  It was my parents all along, though I didn’t love them any less for finding that out.  My Stretch Armstrong didn’t last.  I left him too close to the fireplace one day and he melted. 

You may be doing great with wonder and if you are that’s great.  My prayer for us as we go through the Gospel of John through these weeks leading up to Good Friday and Easter Sunday is that our sense of wonder is deepened.  That we may marvel at the story of Jesus, no matter how many times we have heard it.  That it not might not ever be something we get used to.  That we would be marvelling, to use the KJV language (“They marvelled at his words.”)  That we would hear good news newly.  That we would hear good news afresh and refreshed in the Holy Spirit of God.

Someone has said that “The Gospel according to John was written out of the thrill of actual contact with its leading figure, and one senses the tremors of this contact on every subsequent page.”  One senses the thrum of excitement and joy on every page.  God had been encountered and as we heard last week, Jesus continues to be revealed to us.  Listen to how this encounter is described in 1 John 1 and let us take it in.  “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life – this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us – we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son Jesus Christ.  We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  This is the 500 billion kilometre view, though really we can’t measure it.  We’re talking about an outside-of-time view that is outside of our ability to comprehend and we don’t need to worry about this.  Our dear friend Dennis Bruce would speak of this passage at Christmas time at an Out of the Cold service right here in our sanctuary and would show pictures like these from the Hubble space telescope.  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  I wish I had the voice of James Earl Jones with which to read those words, but we do our best. 

In the face of questions like “What is the meaning of life?”  “What’s it all about (Alfie)?” from the pen of the brilliant Burt Bacharach.  Is it just for the moment we live?  Are we meant to take more than we give?  If only fools are kind, then I guess it’s wise to be cruel?  Is that all there is?  If that all there is, then let’s break out the booze (or our substance of choice) and have a ball.  Is this it?  I’ve stood beside a death bed at which this statement was made.  “I guess that’s it.”  Some of the saddest and most untrue words I’ve ever heard.  Is that it?  Ludwig Wittgenstein, a 20^th century philosopher realized the need for something beyond ourselves.  He was in no way speaking from a Christian perspective but he was speaking something most telling.  He said “The solution to the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.”

To which we all say “Amen brother Ludwig.”  Here’s the good news right from the beginning of John’s good news.  Humanity is neither first, nor have we been left alone.  The Word is from the immeasurable beginning.  We have all come into being through the Word, and the Word has come to us.  There are all kinds of symbols used by John which have become most dear and precious to followers of Christ over 2,000 years.  One of these is light.  Light and life to all, he brings, risen with healing in his wings.  “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”  We like to say “This is the life.”  “This is the life” is largely dependent on circumstances of course.  Rest.  Relaxation.  Ease.  Comfort.  In Christ we can rightly say, this is the life, no matter what circumstances or stage of life in which we are found.  The Word was with God.  The word “with” here means not only “with” but “towards” or “facing toward.”  The Word was facing God (and of course the Holy Spirit was involved too).  The Word, who was God was facing God; living in fellowship with God; living in loving communion (co-union) with God.  To live in such a way is to know life.  Life eternal.  Life of the ages.  Life from above.  Life lived daily in Christ and with Christ in me.  Life for each and every moment of each and every day, which even death does not end, for the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.  Even death did not overcome the light of the World.  Getting to know the Light is like seeing the dawn break over everything.  Getting to know him is like coming to see everyone and everything in a whole new light.  There’s a great C.S. Lewis quote where he picks up this light imagery.  Lewis says, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen – not only because I see it, but by its light I see everything else.” 

The light shines in the darkness, present continuous tense here.  The light of the World continues to shine on in the Word’s followers who are called to be witnesses to the light in our words and in our actions.  The first such witness was a man named John, and the opening zeroes in on him in vv 6-9.  “There was a man sent from, whose name was John.  He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.  The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”  We will speak more of testimony in the coming weeks.  Talking about Jesus, showing about Jesus.  Telling about what Jesus has done in your life; what Jesus is doing in your life.  It’s wonderful to have those opportunities when God puts those opportunities in front of us.  I like to describe it as telling of what God has done in your life, and you know it was of God because it could not have come from you.  Peace.  Comfort. Purpose.  Forgiveness.  Love.  It’s not about boasting when we tell of such things, because we are not boasting of ourselves.  It’s not about us.  He was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.  I am not the light but I am called to let the light shine through me.  Let us not think too much of ourselves, followers of Christ.  Let us not think too little of ourselves either.  “You’re the light of the world,” as Jesus will tell his followers.  Let us not think we are insufficient for this task when we are in Christ; when we have the Spirit of Christ; when we have been given the power to become children of God, for that is what we are, not based on family/national/ethnic/religious background or our own will or anyone else’s will, but born of God.  Born of the grace of God and the gift of faith.  The invitation is to receive him; to believe him; to entrust ourselves to him. This prologue is not just about who God is, but who we might become in Jesus.

At v 14, the 500,000,000 km view now zooms in.  I’m thankful for Google Earth which helps us to imagine this. “And the Word became flesh, and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (14)  It’s popular to say in some quarters “When they go low, we go high.”  When we went low, God humbled himself and came to where we were.  May we never lose our sense of wonder and thanks for this great truth.  Someone has put it like this, “… in the human Jesus of Nazareth, the Absolute became relative, the Almighty — a baby, the Ancient of Days — nowadays, the Divine — human, the Eternal — temporal, the Immortal — mortal, the Infinite — finite. The believing human race is deeply grateful for this Immense Descent.”  We are deeply grateful for this Immense Descent.  God pitched his tent among us.  God moved into our neighbourhood.  Words which are used to try and help us get our hearts around this wonderful truth of God with us.

This is John’s Christmas story and I want to share a story of Christmas through which I learned something about what it means that God moved into our neighbourhood. Christmas Eve 2011 was my first Christmas as a pastor here at Blythwood.  It was a Saturday night which meant Out of the Cold.  Over 100 people sharing dinner downstairs and around 70 staying overnight.  We had a group of people from church who were going to be singing Christmas Carols.  We were set up at the piano in the middle of the room and I’m looking a little nervous here.  It was not unknown for the odd scuffle to break out.  Nothing ever too serious, thankfully.  Just as we were about to begin, the sound of chairs being pushed back forcefully and angry shouts.  Trouble had broken out.  Rocky was sitting at the piano and I leaned down and said “Just start playing ‘Silent Night’!” Maybe this would help ease things.  It didn’t. More people joined in the fight and it took some minutes for Dixon Hall staff (for whom we were always thankful) to quiet things down.  We sang eventually but the whole episode cast a pall.  It made people tense, uneasy, nervous.  I was praying about it later on and I said “Why God, on Christmas Eve of all nights with the kids there and everything?”  I heard God say to me, “I came down into the mess, and I call you to be in the middle of the mess too.  Know that I am with you too.”

When we come to the end of our passage for this morning, we find that we too are included in John’s prologue.  “From his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace.” (16)  Unmerited favour has shown up.  Grace and truth have come in the form of this man who is God.  God has been made known, God is made known, and God will be made known, in the Word of Light and Life.

What else could we do but wonder, but marvel?  As Lent begins, I want us to have a chance to signal our intention to walk in the light of Jesus, and to let his light shine in and through us.  That we would go through our days being living candles illuminating grace upon grace.  I invite us to light our candles with the phrase, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.

Amen

Hear good news this day church family.  Jesus shows himself to us.  Jesus appears to us.  John 21 is considered an epilogue to John’s Gospel.  In John’s prologue, he writes that the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, lived among us, to describe how God is revealed in the person of Christ.  In John’s epilogue, we hear that Jesus will continue to be revealed to his followers through His Word, through meals, and through good shepherding. 

Do you need this?  Do you need Jesus to be appearing as he appeared one day on a beach with a fire going?  Do you need to be called or re-called constantly with those words which we heard at the beginning of our “Sharing a Table” series?  Follow me.  This is what Jesus is saying in our story and it’s still our invitation.  “How’s it going?” asks Jesus.  “Try this,” says Jesus.  “You have a part to play in my kingdom,” says Jesus.  “Let’s have breakfast!”  “Follow me.” This is a good message for this time of year, I think.  The “dog days of winter” as I like to say.  The time that for some feels like the longest most dreary part of the season.  We live in times that for many mean that the phrase “lives of quiet desperation” has taken on a whole new meaning.  God is with us, and we’ve been pointedly celebrating God meeting us at tables. The Gospel of John was written so that people may come or continue to believe.  It says so right in the book.  We come back to it time and time again so that we may continue to believe.  When it comes to faith, the concern for ourselves and/or those closest to us is not if we believe that Jesus has risen, but that it doesn’t seem to be making much of a difference in our or their lives.  This story that we’re looking at this morning is about what happens when the dog days set in.  When routine futility sets in.  What does this news that Christ appears to us and re-calls us mean for us?  What does it mean in terms of who we are called and enabled to be?  Let us look at this passage from John 21 and see what God may have to say to our hearts.

I want to start by saying what this message is about.  It’s a call to discipleship.  I read an article recently in which the author talked about seeing the church’s role as one of calling people to discipleship.  The author called it rigorous discipleship.  I like the term radical discipleship.  I want this for myself.  I want this for our faith family here at Blythwood, no matter our number.  Imagine if we had x number of people committed to radical discipleship here.  X number of people committed to being learners of Christ and committed to being formed into the image of Christ.  X number of people who were like this and who gathered here and went out from here and represented Christ in their homes, in the workplaces, and their schools.  If people who knew us knew there was something different about us and heard from us why this is and knew they could ask us about matters of faith and doubt and that we wouldn’t judge them or condemn them but would simply love and accept them.  If all the things we were doing together – hearing the word, praying singing, gathering around tables, studying the Bible… if all the things we did alone – praying, reading, resting in Christ, waiting on the Lord, longing to know God and to make God known… being filled with the Holy Spirit to the point that it was like a stream gushing up in us to eternal life – pointing to life eternal, life from above, life that is from God and in God… if we did all those things for however long God calls us to do them here then I would consider this church a success.  I would consider my service to God here a success.  The fact that you’re here this morning says that you believe the same thing. At least to some extent. There’s at least some sort of the same yearning in you.  

The disciples have gone back to Galilee in our story. “After these things…” is how our story starts. There are seven of them.  Peter says “I’m going fishing.”  They go out with him at night.  There’s a certain resignation here I believe. The post-resurrection excitement has died down.  What else is there to do?  Let’s get on with our lives.  Is this all there is to being disciples?  Getting back to our lives?  It doesn’t go well for Peter and the others.  They’re out all night and haven’t caught any fish.

Jesus doesn’t leave them alone though. Isn’t that good?  Jesus is always searching for us.  He’s standing on the beach.  They don’t know who it is.  He’s watching them and he calls out “Children, you have no fish, have you?”  As in our story last week of the two on the road to Emmaus, Jesus starts with a question.  How’s it going?  Doesn’t seem to be going too well!  They have the courage to answer honestly.  “No,” they say.  “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.”  Listen to me, in other words. They do and the net’s so full of fish they can’t haul it in.  The disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!”  Ever impetuous Peter puts his clothes on, jumps in the water and heads to shore (leaving the rest of his friends to do the heavy lifting- literally).  He wants to meet with Jesus.

He wants to meet with Jesus.  He wants to spend time with Jesus. Jesus is waiting on the beach with a charcoal fire going and fish and bread.  What do we think of when we smell charcoal?  I know what I think of – backyard BBQ or grill time!  Why is this detail even in here?  Because Peter could not have smelled charcoal without thinking of the night Jesus was arrested. Peter had stood warming himself by a charcoal fire in the high priest’s courtyard.  Three times Peter is questioned.  “You’re not one of his disciples are you?” “Did I not see you in the garden with him?”  “No I am not,” answered Peter.  “That wasn’t me.”

He had messed up.  After saying “Even if everyone else deserts you I will never desert you,” Peter had deserted him.  He’d messed up.  We get that.  We mess up.  It’s one of my biggest fears as a pastor.  Messing up.  Getting in between someone and God due to something I do or something I fail to do. Part of what it means to be a disciple, a student of Christ, is realizing our own insufficiency in following Christ. We need to realize that.  The prophet Isaiah has a vision of the heavenly throne in Isaiah 6.  He cries out “Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips…”  Peter has said something similar on the shores of the very lake he’s on now.  When Luke tells a similar story of a miraculous catch of fish so large it was breaking the disciples’ nets, Peter falls at Jesus’ knees saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”  Do you know what happens to Isaiah?  A seraph takes a pair of tongs.   The seraph picks up a coal and flies over and touches it to Isaiah’s lips.  “Your guilt is departed from you and your sin is blotted out.”  While the charcoal undoubtedly reminded Peter of that night, here is Jesus with charcoal and he’s brought the fish and the bread and he’s also brought forgiveness.  Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them (and this is always reminding us of another meal that Jesus shares with us) and did the same with the fish.

Jesus then takes Peter for a walk.  This next scene with Peter happens away from the others.  Jesus gets to the heart of the matter.  Jesus gets to the number one qualification for being his follower.  “Do you love me?”  The first time it’s “Do you love me more than these?”  Peter had made some grandiose claims about his own loyalty in front of everyone else, and it’s never about comparing ourselves to someone else when it comes to our love for God (favourably or unfavourably).    The question is for each of us. “Do you love me?”  “Yes, Lord; you know I love you.”  It’s the key question.  It’s the first half of the greatest commandment.  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”  Then comes the second half of the greatest commandment – “Feed my lambs.”  We’re always coming back to the lambs!  Jesus asks a second time and the answer comes back, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.” “Tend my sheep.”  Different words.  Sheep.  Lambs.  Feed.  Tend.  Service – caring for others in Jesus’ name and for his sake will be all-encompassing  It will be different for different people.  Feed.  Tend.  Lambs. Sheep.  You’re going to be the shepherd now, Peter.

Of course, these words aren’t just for Peter.  They’re not even just for professional Christians.  We are all going to be shepherds.  Imagine! 

Feed my lambs.  Tend my sheep.  Feed my sheep.  However, can we do this?  Does it seem unlikely?  It should be because we know ourselves right?  We know what goes on in our hearts and minds and souls.  If you’ve followed Jesus for any length of time you also know what he’s done to change your heart.  We don’t do this on our own friends.  We do this in the power and with the accompaniment of the risen Christ who appeared to his followers and breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This is the Christ with whom we are walking. NT Wright puts it excellently in his book John For Everyone:

“Here is the secret of all Christian ministry, yours and mine, lay and ordained, full-time or part-time. It’s the secret of everything from being a quiet back-row member of a prayer group to being a platform speaker at huge rallies and conferences.  If you are going to do any single solitary thing as a follower and servant of Jesus, this is what it’s built on. Somewhere, deep down inside, there is a love for Jesus, and though (goodness knows) you’ve let him down enough times, he wants to find that love, to give you a chance to express it, to heal the hurts and failures of the past, to give you new work to do.”

Here's the amazing thing about Jesus’ response to Peter’s “You know I love you.”  Jesus doesn’t say “Well, love me then.”  Jesus doesn’t say “Well let that love be shown in emotive outbursts toward me.”  “Take care of the flock,” Jesus says.  Tend to.  Feed.  This passage is often read for pastors at ordination services, but the call here is on each and every one of our lives.  We all have a flock, you see.  Take care of the people to whom God entrusts us.  God trusts us.  Parents, your children.  Children, your parents.  Pastors, your congregations and congregations your pastors and leaders.  Those at work are our clients, customers, co-workers, patients, students, and teachers.  The people in the apartment beside you and across the hall.  The people in the house next door and across the street.  Your friends.  Your enemies too if we’re really taking Jesus’ words seriously. And we want to take Jesus seriously.  May we have joy in our seriousness, knowing that for over 2,000 years how Jesus has made himself known to his followers.  Jesus appears, Jesus makes himself known when his word is proclaimed.  “It is the Lord!”  This is the message.  It is the one who is worthy of all our love, all our thanks, all our praise, all our adoration.  Jesus, the one in whom John says we have received grace upon grace.  The one in whom is life, and this life is the light of all people.  The one who said , “Come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.”  The one who said “My peace I leave with you, my peace I give you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” 

Jesus is made known at His table of grace and thanksgiving.  Jesus may make himself known at any table around which his people gather.  Where no-condition invitations are extended and accepted.  Where stories of God’s presence in our lives are shared. 

Jesus is made known, Jesus appears, when the love which his followers have for him is demonstrated in our care for one another.  Jesus is made known as those who follow him take up his call, “Feed my lambs.  Tend my sheep.  Feed my sheep.”  Look after them.  Lord, help us look after them as you look after us and carry us close to your heart.  “Precious Lord reveal your heart to me,” we sing.  May that be our prayer as we enter into a season of preparation to celebrate the life, death, and resurrection of the one who continues to prove his care for us.

Amen 

I wonder if someone has ever prevailed upon you when it came to an invitation.  It might depend on our cultural background.  For many of us, it might seem impolite to prevail upon someone.  I remember one Sunday some years ago, Nicole and I took her mother to visit a Greek family (a husband and wife) whom Mrs. Micas had known back in Greece.  We had been to church and had lunch.  We intended to drop her off at their house and come back later to pick her up.  When we got to the house, Tryphon (the husband) came out to greet us and asked us to come in.  “No, no, thank you,” I said through the car window, “We’ve made plans, we don’t want to impose.”  All the things you say to try and get out of an invitation.  Tryphon reached through the window to take hold of my arm and started opening the car door.  “You MUST you MUST come and have lunch with us!”  I looked over at Nicole and our eyes said “Well I guess this is what we’re doing for the next little while!”  Five hours later, we left after having had an amazing and prolonged Greek meal, which included a guitar/bouzouki jam (the first time I ever played a bouzouki).  We had had an experience which we would not have had if Tryphon had not urged us. We would have missed it.

I don’t want us to miss anything, dear church family.  I invite you to make that invitation with me today.  “Stay with us.”  Let us urge him strongly together.

I’m talking about Jesus of course.  Our hope.        

We need to be able to talk about hope.  “In what or whom do we hope?”  Before we answer this question, we need to define what we mean when we talk about hope.  When we talk about hope, we are not talking about something that we would like to happen, as in, “I hope you can come to my party next week” or “I hope it doesn’t rain.”  When we speak of hope in the faith, we are not simply speaking of wishing.  We are not speaking of hope in the faith simply as some kind of pie-in-the-sky dream, or as something that is disconnected from daily reality.  I read a comment recently that was critical of Christian hope of a world to come as “pie in the sky.” This made me want to look up the origin of the phrase “pie in the sky.”  It means “something good that is promised but seems impossible or unlikely.”  It comes from a song written by a labour organizer Joe Hill in 1915 called “The Preacher and the Slave.”  Hill is critical of Christian hope that is disconnected from everyday life – in this case the plight of the poor.  The song is a parody of “In the Sweet By and By” and the relevant lines go like this:

“You will eat by and by/In that glorious land above the sky/Work and pray, live on hay/You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”

This is harsh but it speaks to a disconnect between our hope as followers of Christ and what is going on around us.  The whole story is moving toward a renewed creation characterized by justice and righteousness.  God with us and the end of mourning and sorrow.  We are not called to live apathetically or indifferently in living out that vision.

My favourite and shortest definition of what hope means in Christ is simply this.  The confident expectation of good. This is what we mean when we talk about hope.   

The question is, “In what or in whom do we hope?  In what or in whom do we have a confident expectation of good?”  Anyone?  Anything?  Nothing? 

The song “In Christ Alone” has become much loved and meaningful.  It describes hope in Christ like this: “In Christ alone, our hope is found, he is my life, my strength, my song/ This cornerstone, this solid ground/ Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.”  Make no mistake, there will be droughts and storms.  There will be times (and we may be in one now) where we are saying, along with these two travellers in our story as they walk the way of despair toward Emmaus, “We didn’t think things would turn out this way.”  I didn’t think things would go this way.  I don’t know that things will ever go any differently.  This talk of hope and despair is a serious matter, and we don’t come to God’s Word to be unserious.  This talk of hope and despair is a matter of life and death, and this is good because we don’t come to church or engage with the Living Word of God simply to be entertained or distracted or made to feel good about ourselves.  This is serious stuff.  There are fewer sadder words than “I didn’t think things would turn out this way” and people are saying or thinking them all around and including us.

So Luke tells the story, full of changes of mood and direction (literally), dramatic irony (where the listener is aware of something the people in the story are not), dramatic revealing of identity, a flurry of action and movement, a joyful sharing of news.  I have to say two things about the story from the outset.  First - Jesus is made known/revealed in the Word – in the reading, hearing, exposition of, remembering the Word of God with people who believe it to be truth.  Do not let us neglect it. This is the second – Jesus is revealed/made known when we gather around a table in his presence.  Word and Table.  Christ with us.  God with us as we walk along together. As Cleopas and his unnamed companion walk along together.  Let us put ourselves right alongside Cleopas.    “Now on that same day, two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem., and talking with each other about all these things that had happened.”  Things did not go the way they expected them to go.  “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” they say, speaking of Jesus.  Their journey away from Jerusalem is one of despair.  It was the end of “confident expectation of good.” 

We get this, don’t we?  The experience which leaves us saying, “I didn’t think things would go this way.”  It might be in our education or a job or a whole career.  It might be with our children.  It might be in a relationship or marriage.  It might be in the death of a relationship or marriage.  It might be in a death.  Death is surely the thing like no other that signals the end of hope, isn’t it?  Isn’t that the way things work?

But… here’s the thing.  Here’s the “but.”  It’s the same “but” that started this chapter.  “But on the first day of the week…”  It’s the first day of the week.  It’s resurrection day.  It’s a new life day.  Christ is risen.  Not only has Christ risen, but he is walking along with them. 

“While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them...”  Jesus himself came near and went with.  Jesus himself comes near and goes with.  Jesus’ knowledge of and accompaniment with his followers is tender and personal. 

Jesus asks them what they’re talking about.  Let we who follow Jesus take a lesson from his example here when it comes to walking alongside those who are hurting, those who are struggling, those who are despairing and without any expectation of good things.  Jesus doesn’t impose himself or an easy answer upon them.  He comes near, and he says, “Tell me what’s going on.”  “What are you discussing with each other as you walk along?”  “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” asks Cleopas incredulously.  The irony is of course, rich.  Cleopas is speaking to the very person who was at the centre of all that had taken place.  “What things,” replies Jesus, at which point Cleopas tells the story (verses 19-24)

Then Jesus begins to speak.  We do well to listen to him.  How foolish we are, how slow of heart to believe all the prophets have declared.  This is why we come back to this Word time after time after time.  Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?  This was the plan all along!  “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.”

Why do we come back to this story day after day and week after week?  Jesus makes the story known in light of his death and resurrection.  A story of humanity created to live in loving harmony with God and all of God’s good creation.  A story of rebellion.  A story of God’s promises running through the story of rejection of God and the consequences of this rejection.  A story which is summed up in Joseph’s words to his brothers “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”  What do those words mean to us in the light of the risen Christ walking alongside us and sitting at a table with us?  The whole story points to the cross.  Being brought back to God, being delivered from sin and death, being saved from despair, was never about being saved from suffering, but being saved through suffering and death, which would lead to new life on this third day.  It was always about the divine “but.”  Remember, “But God remembered Noah…”  “You intended to harm me, but God…” “My heart and my flesh may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”  I was lost, but God.  I couldn’t see, but God.  I couldn’t forgive, but God.  I was at the end of my resources, but God.  I was in the depths of despair, but God.  I couldn’t believe in any kind of expectation of any sort of good – but God.   Are we still asking why we read this stuff?  The sacrifice provided to Abraham on Mt. Moriah pointed ahead to him.  The Passover lamb, without a blemish, pointed ahead to him.  The manna provided by God in the wilderness pointed ahead to the Bread of Heaven.  The suffering servant of Isaiah pointed ahead to him.  The one who proclaimed good news to the poor, freedom for the oppressed, recovery of sight to the blind pointed ahead to the one who stood up in his hometown synagogue and read those words and announced, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”  Today.  But on the first day of the week, Jesus walks alongside us and reveals Himself in His word.

What else could we do but invite him in to sit down and eat?  Jesus revealed in his word.  Jesus made known at a table.  The importance of extending and accepting invitations.  “As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.  But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’”  The day is almost over, but it’s not over.  The day of the Lord’s favour.  The day of grace.  The day of unmerited favour.  Stay with us, Lord.  May this be the prayer of all our hearts as we turn together earnestly and often to Word and Table.  I’m coming to an ever greater understanding of the foundational significance of Jesus revealing himself at tables and at the Table.   I have the sense that many of us are, and I am thankful for this.  Jesus the guest becomes Jesus the host.  “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight.”

The two walk with Jesus.  The two hear Jesus speak.  The two break bread with Jesus.  Jesus is revealed.  The two then remember.  How often in our lives do we realize the extent of God’s work in our lives when we look back?

“They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning with us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”  I pray, “Lord give us hearts that burn with the fire of your Holy Spirit.” 

When we talk about warm hearts or hearts that are on fire even, we’re not just talking about a relational warmth like we may feel warmly toward one another.  We’re talking about a transforming fire in our hearts that makes us new; that deepens faith; that restores and strengthens hope – the assured expectation of good no matter our circumstances.  We don’t need to call this fire up ourselves, it’s the Holy Spirit in us.  We leave ourselves open to this fire by continuing together (because it wasn’t one person on the road) in God’s Word and Table, with the risen Jesus before us, behind us, alongside us.  It leads Cleopas and his companion to get back out on the road, but this time they’re heading in the opposite direction in a journey of hope toward Jerusalem.  They went, and they told.  May we live in the same hope and always be ready to tell about it too.  May this be true for all of us. Amen

I want to encourage us in “both/and” thinking as we consider the story of hospitality and welcome, which is before us this morning.  There is a lot of talk around about “both/and” thinking versus “either/or” thinking, and it’s good for us to engage in the same talk as followers of Christ.  Either/or can lead to polarization, alienation and even conflict.  You’re either with us or against us, is one example.  Both/and recognizes that two things can be true and can be held together.  Consider some of the truths of our faith that we hold together at the same time:

God is wholly other/wholly holy, and God lives within us

The kingdom of heaven or reign of God is a present reality, and it is coming

God is in control, and we have a part to play in God’s work (even in a miracle, as we saw last week)

Jesus is, at the same time, fully divine and fully human

Hearing and doing are both operative in our story.  They are not an either/or proposition.  Here is Jesus in 8:21 “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”  Here is Jesus in 11:28 “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”  In a good position are such people!

So I am not going to pit these two sisters against each other.  The other thing we need to guard against here is seeing either of them as some sort of caricature.  Mary sits at Jesus’ feet, and we may see this as a very passive or simply adoring or even grovelling.  In the language of the day, to sit at someone’s feet meant to learn.  Paul speaks of sitting at the feet of Gamaliel in Acts 22:3: “…brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law…”  To sit at the feet of a rabbi didn’t simply mean gaze up, lost in admiration, but to listen intently and with purpose.  It meant to be a student.  Life-long learning in our case, with Jesus.  The purpose was to become like the rabbi.  As we’ve heard, when it comes to Jesus, it’s the thing that goes along with doing.  We mustn’t make a caricature out of sister Martha either.  As someone has said, “…we must not cartoon the scene: Martha to her eyeballs in soapsuds, Mary pensively on a stool in the den, and Jesus giving scriptural warrant for letting dishes pile high in the sink.”

Martha is serving.  It’s the same word that is used to describe the women who were with Jesus and the 12 back in chapter 8.  Mary from Magdala.  Joanna.  Susanna.  They provided for them, is how the NRSV translates the word diakoneo (same word we get deacon from).  To wait on, to attend to, to serve.  Luke has no problem talking about women alongside men in service to Jesus.  Martha was distracted by her many tasks, by her diakonia (same word in noun form).  There’s no mention of what those tasks were exactly.  She’s serving.  This is good, right?

Before that, she is welcoming.  The 10^th chapter of the Gospel of Luke starts with Jesus sending out 70 followers ahead of him as he travels to Jerusalem.  He sends them out in pairs, and his instructions are simple (and familiar as we heard last week – tell and show, do and speak) – Cure the sick and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” (10:9)  Jesus tells the seventy to remain where they are welcomed.  They are to carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.  Their lives in service to Jesus are to be marked by dependence and trust.  Dependence on God.  Dependence on one another.  Trust in God.  Trust in one another.  Trust in others.  Eat what is set before you.  Do what is set before you to do.  Grounded in our dependence on God and our need for God.  Grounded in our trust in God and God’s trust in us.

Aside – It’s amazing to consider that God trusts us.  We pay a lot of attention to trusting God and speak of faith as trusting in God, who has shown himself to be trustworthy and faithful to his promises, and rightly so.  We mustn’t forget, though, as we consider our own significance in God’s renewal/restoration plan, that God trusts us to make God’s kingdom known.   There is a verse in 1 Thessalonians that goes like this, Paul is speaking of the good news:  “² but though we had already suffered and been shamefully maltreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. ³ For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, ⁴ but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts.” (1 Thess 2:2-4)

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem in Luke 10.  “Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.” (10:38)  Martha receives Jesus into her home as one receives a guest.  One of the ways in which we describe life in Christ is following.  “Follow me!” said Jesus to Levi, and Levi got up and left everything and followed him.  It’s a good image to describe the Christ-following life.  Here is another one.  Welcoming.  Receiving as one would receive a guest into one’s home.  “How Shall I Receive Thee?” asks a hymn.  The first lines go like this:

“O how shall I receive Thee,

How meet Thee on Thy way?

Blessed hope of every people,

My soul's delight and stay?”

Martha welcomes Jesus.  What would it be like for us to welcome Jesus every day into our conversations, into our meals, into our thoughts, into our tasks, into our work, into our play, into our sorrow, into our joy, into our assurances, into our doubts?  Martha welcomes Jesus.  Martha is serving.  Mary is listening.  The two sisters are the embodiment of two instructions that have already been heard in Luke.  In Luke 9:35, at Jesus’ transfiguration, we read, “Then from a cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’”  At the end of the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus asks the expert in the law, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  The answer comes back “The one who showed him mercy.”  Jesus replies, “Go and do likewise.”

Sit and listen.  Go and do.  Both/and.  There is a radicality to this story that we must not miss.  As someone has said, “Jesus is received into a woman’s home (no mention is made of a brother), and he teaches a woman.  Rabbis did not allow women to ‘sit at their feet,’ that is, to be disciples.”  Living space within the house that would be designated for men or for women is being shared.  Walls that would keep people apart from one another are being broken down here in Jesus’ reign.  Jesus is looking beyond labels or markers of identity.

But Martha was distracted by her many tasks.  Literally, Martha was pulled away by her “lots of” service.  Martha’s service has distracted her from the one she serves.  We get this.  We can get lost in acts of service to the point where we get resentful.  Here’s a painting by Diego Velasquez (early 17^th century) which illustrates this, and shows the two sisters very much in opposition to one another.  We may look at others and say things like, “Why aren’t they doing as much as me?”  We may know what it’s like to feel that our work is taken for granted by others (and maybe even by God?).  We know what it’s like to feel snowed under by tasks and people who depend on us.  Jesus is not too hard on Martha here, and neither should we be.  Let us not to be too hard on ourselves either, but let us hear Jesus calling our name twice here.  “Martha, Martha.”  Martha has become so pulled away from the one she is serving that her focus has shifted to herself.  “Lord, do you not care (does God even care?) that my sister has left ME to all the work by MYSELF?  Tell her to help ME.”  Even in the middle of her being distracted, Martha is still talking to Jesus.  She has welcomed him in, and she hasn’t forgotten him. 

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but there is need of only one thing.” (10:41b-42a)  What is the one thing needful?  It’s the Sunday School answer, but let us never forget it.  It’s Jesus.  He had sent his followers out without a bag or stick or extra clothes or money to remind of this.  This work to which his followers are called is completely and wholly dependent on him. 

What is the one thing needful?  What is the one thing that the church needs?  What is the one thing that I need that you need?  Perhaps we had better say “who”.  He’s right here.  Jesus is right here (gesture at heart) when we receive him, and the invitation is before us – receive him, follow him.  We were not created for distracted worry or resentment or being snowed under by endless tasks.  The one thing needful is Jesus, and Mary is fixed on him.  It has been suggested that we not be overly harsh on Martha in case she gives up serving altogether.  At the same time, we mustn’t commend Mary too too much, in case she may sit there forever.  In answer to the question “Are you a Mary or a Martha?”, perhaps the best reply on our part should be “Yes!”  There is a time to sit and listen.  There is a time to go and do.

Martha and Mary lives in the same place, after all.  There’s another painting of this scene by Alessandro Allori (16th cent.), which reflects the complementary nature of listening and doing with our eyes firmly fixed on Christ.  Hearing and doing.  So may Jesus be in our hearing and in our doing as we ask God to help us fix our eyes on the one we need.  Jesus in our stillness.  Jesus in our tasks.  Jesus in our getting up and lying down.  Jesus in our ears and eyes and hands and feet.  May this be our prayer of each and every one of us? Amen            

I remember starting out in leadership here at Blythwood Road Baptist Church.  I became a deacon here in 2005.  I remember calling one of my fellow deacons once and saying to them, “Sorry for bothering you.”  Do you know what they told me? “You’re never bothering me.”  I never forgot this, and I took it to heart for myself.  It’s wonderful what we learn by one another’s example isn’t it?

You are never bothering me.  Jesus called the 12 to come away and rest awhile.  To withdraw privately to a city called Bethsaida which is on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. In the middle of these private plans came an interruption.  Don’t worry about an interruption, whether you’re the interruptor or the interupptee.  Please!   I implore you!  Henri Nouwen (speaking of people we can learn from) wrote this about meeting a professor at Notre Dame:

“While visiting the University of Notre Dame, where I had been a teacher for a few years, I met an older experienced professor who had spent most of his life there. And while we strolled over the beautiful campus, he said with a certain melancholy in his voice, “You know, my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.”

This is most Christlike.  In the preceding chapter, Jesus is on his way to Jairus’ house.  Jairus is a leader in the local synagogue.  Jesus is on his way to help Jairus’ daughter.  It is a matter of life and death.  Jairus’ daughter is dying.  The crowds are surrounding and pressing in on Jesus as he goes.  A woman suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years, who had spent all she had on physicians, touched the fringe of his clothes.  Immediately she is healed.  Jesus stops.  On his way to raise a dead child to life.  Jesus stops.  My interruptions were my work.  “Daughter, your faith has made you well,” are the words with which Jesus leaves the woman.

You’re never bothering me.  This is the first thing.

Here is the second thing.  Jesus invites/calls/enlists us in the work of the reign of God.  “You give them something to eat,”  I remember being struck by these words the first time (the first of many), and I pray that we may be struck by them this morning.  They’re a big deal.  Many of us have read of this miracle and heard many sermons on this miracle and rightly so.  It’s told by all four Gospel writers.  It’s thought to have happened near a village called Tabgha, at which a church was constructed.  In this church, there is a mosaic (and you know how I feel about mosaics).  If this mosaic looks familiar, it’s because a smaller version of it is kept on our communion table here at church.  I picked this up in Jordan shortly after seeing the original at Tabgha.  I also bought a change dish, which I used when change was more of a thing.  Now it’s for guitar picks and cufflinks mainly.  We need ways to keep the Lord in front of us, and this is one of the ways I keep the Lord in front of me and remember Jesus’ words here – “You give them something to eat.”

We’re talking about eating over these six weeks, during which we are considering “Sharing a Table,” encountering the hospitality of God, and sharing the hospitality of God.  We said last week that when we’re sitting with these stories from Luke’s Gospel, we should always keep in mind Jesus’ words about what his mission was. Here they are:

The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me.  He has called me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.  To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18-19)  Jesus goes about his mission – proclaiming, healing, forgiving, raising, calling.  “Follow me” is the call. This call is before each and every one of us every day.  We want to take this seriously.  We don’t know how much time we have.  We ask God to help us number our days, as the Psalmist put it.  To make the most of the time that we are gifted.  Not long ago, I was talking to a couple of the youngest members of our church family about playing guitar.  I said, “I’ve been playing guitar for 40 years, can you believe it?”  One of them replied, “So you have about another 30 years to go?”  Out of the mouths of children.  We want to take our following seriously and come to an ever greater understanding in our hearts that we are called to be sent, that we gather to be scattered and blessed, that we are blessed to be a blessing.

That God has a role for us to play in God’s great renewal/restoration project.  That renewal and restoration may start in our hearts, but it doesn’t end there.  You give them something to eat!  We’re called to be sent.  We’re blessed to be a blessing, and every interaction we have is an opportunity to bless.  To notice.  To pay attention.  To show mercy.  To show compassion.  To slow down.  To be patient. 

This is not just God’s work, it is ours.  In Luke 9, we see the beginning of God sending God’s people.  Jesus sends the 12 disciples: “Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.”  Called to be sent.  In chapter 10, the program will widen, and 70 will be sent.  When the gift of the Holy Spirit comes to all in Acts 1, all will be sent.  The 12 disciples are instructed by Jesus in Chapter 9 to take nothing with them: no bag, no walking stick, no bread, no money, and no extra clothes.  They are to stay where they are welcomed and not stay where they are not welcomed.  We read in v6 “They departed and went through the villages, bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere.”

Two things I want us to take from this mission of the twelve that comes right before our story.  The first is that speaking the good news and showing the good news are to be hallmarks of the church’s life and our lives.  Telling the good news.  In Christ, there is life, and that life is the light of all people.  In Christ, there is hope and peace and joy and love that transcends any circumstance.  Showing the good news.  Acts of service.  Acts of mercy.  Acts of trust and sharing.  Acts of trust in God and others and acts of sharing God’s unfathomable goodness.  Telling and showing life in the reign of Jesus.  The second is that the call to God’s service, which is a call on the life of each and every follower of Christ, is first a call to dependence on God.  We are never fully “prepared” for service.  We never reach a point where we say, “I have trained adequately, I have prayed adequately, I have praised adequately, I have filled in the blank adequately.”  We are prepared for service only as we depend on God.  What would it mean for us to believe this and live it?  What would this mean for me?  How would I go about calling on the name of God each day?  Waking up and praying, “Thank you, God, for the gift of another day.  Here I am, your servant; let it be with me according to your word.”  Praying each and every day, “Christ Jesus, teach me the art of following you.  Holy Spirit, give me the wisdom to know how to hold on to you as you hold me up.”  What would it mean for our desire to worship and praise together?  What would it mean for our desire to gather around tables where God is present and where God extends a welcome to all? 

Even in what we perceive to be interruptions.  Maybe especially then.  They withdraw privately to a city called Bethsaida.  “When the crowds find out about it, they followed him; and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.” (9:11)   Jesus is speaking, healing. He’s going to be feeding, and he’s going to enlist his followers in this work.  “He has filled the hungry with good things,” sang his mother.  Figuratively and literally!

I wouldn’t be too hard on the disciples here.  Put ourselves in their place.  Slow to comprehend.  Slow to act. I don’t think it was necessarily a lack of care for people that caused them to ask Jesus to send the crowds away.  It was I believe more a recognition that the need that they saw all around them was more than they could meet.  The need that they saw around them was beyond their resources.  This is not necessarily a bad place to be if it means that coming to the end of our resources gives us the recognition that we need to depend on God’s resources.  “You give them something to eat,” says Jesus.  It’s not all going to be up to God.  We have a role to play.

 “They said, ‘We have no more than five loaves and two fish—unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.’”  Which is impossible what with Jesus having just sent them out with no money, no bag, no tunic, no walking stick.  They don’t even have something they could sell to try and raise money for fish sandwiches.  The disciples have a role to play.  Listen and do.  It’s a pattern that will recur in Luke.  Jesus tells them to arrange everyone in groups of 50 and have them sit.  Five thousand men plus women and children.  Imagine the scene.   “And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.”   Jesus uses us even in our lack of understanding, even in our lack of trust, there’s hope for us.  Jesus throws a party and turns his closest followers into table servants (though there are no tables here).  Everyone is welcome.  The good news spreads.  Someone has said, “Jesus can take a little bit of food and stretch it to satisfy a whole multitude. Even so, the gospel grows like a mustard seed, spread by open hearts and welcome tables.”  Open hearts and welcome tables (the table here being the grass like a gospel picnic).  There is plenty to share.  There is grace to share.  There is grace for all. Of course, we hear the echoes of the meal around which we gathered last week.  Taking the five loaves and two fish, Jesus looks up to heaven, and blesses, and breaks them, and gives them to the disciples to set before the crowd.  In taking the food and looking up, Jesus recognizes the source of the gift.  God.  In blessing and breaking, Jesus is the mediator of the gift.  In giving to the disciples, Jesus commissions them (and those who will follow) as his authorized representatives/kingdom ambassadors/living letters of Christ whose task it is to make the goodness of God known as all eat and all are filled.

Even in the middle of interruptions.  Especially then, maybe.  You’re never bothering me.  May all the meals we share together form us in the way of Jesus’ abundant provision and wide welcome.  May this be true for us all.  Amen.

We’re in the period of Ordinary Time in the church calendar that goes from Christmastide to the beginning of Lent.  Over the next six weeks, we are going to be looking at what it means to eat with Jesus.  We are going to look at stories of meals that Jesus attends or hosts and ask what they have to say to us about what it means to follow him.  What do they have to say about the meals that we share together?  I love the story of the call of Levi.  The invitation comes from Jesus – “Follow me.”  Part of Levi’s response is to throw a party; to host a banquet.  We’re invited to a banquet of our own this morning.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we hear God’s word for us this morning.  Let’s pray.

Over these six weeks, we’re going to be looking at a few stories about eating with Jesus in Luke’s Gospel.  As we do, I want us to keep in mind the way that Jesus described his own mission.  We said over Advent that our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to accept it.  This is to say, trust in Jesus as the foundation of our lives, and accept Jesus’ mission as foundational to our own lives.  Here is how Jesus described his mission when he read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah in his hometown of Nazareth.  I will keep on encouraging memorization of Bible verses, so I’ll add this one to the list:

“The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.  To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”  (Luke 4:18-19)  Jesus then begins this work.  Proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.  Healing. Releasing.  Forgiving.  Calling.  Inviting.  There is an immediacy to Jesus’ work and an immediacy to Jesus’ love.  We said the day before Christmas that God’s love meets us at a specific time and a specific place.  We who follow him are called to meet others with the love of God at specific places and specific times – namely, here and now.  “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” said Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth.  When Jesus forgives and heals a man who was paralyzed, we read, “Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen strange things today.’” (Luke 5:26)

Let us not lose our wonder, our amazement, and our thanks that God’s love meets us every day.  Let us never lose our wonder, our amazement, and our thanks that God calls us every day.  Let us hear those words directed at Levi directed at us.  “Follow me.”  There are no preconditions.  There is no demand that Levi get things right with God before he answers the call.  There is simply the call.  Thomas a Kempis was a German/Dutch writer of the 14^th century.  He wrote a book about following Jesus called “The Imitation of Christ.”  This is what he said about following Jesus.  He said, “It is a great art to know how to keep company with Jesus and great wisdom to know how to hold him.”  To this, I would add that any holding onto Jesus that we do is situated in the great truth that Jesus is holding onto us.  The Psalmist sang it like this, “My soul clings to you, your right hand holds me fast.” (get ref)  The call to follow is enabled and empowered by the one who calls us.  I would also say that the art of keeping company with Jesus is one that we are called to practice together.  We wouldn’t do it alone any more than we would eat alone all the time.

Before the call comes from Jesus, Jesus sees Levi.  “After this, he went out, and saw a tax collector named Levi…” (5:27a). Jesus sees Levi.  Like he really sees him.  One of the things we tend to do is make judgements and assumptions about people about people based on what we see.  We need to be aware of this and temper it as much as we can.  Jesus looks beyond Levi’s type.  Jesus looks beyond the stereotype.  Tax collectors.  Not simply civil servants working for the CRA or Ontario Finance Ministry, or the City of Toronto Finance Department.  Collaborators with Rome!  In league with the occupying power.  Poll tax.  Road and bridge tax.  Tax on merchandise.  Property tax.  Tax collection powers for any given district were usually given to a well-to-do outsider, who would have locals working for them.  A system rife with corruption.  Tax collectors were well known for enriching themselves at the expense of those being taxed.  Out to this, the fact that contact with Gentiles made local tax collectors “unclean” – excluded from synagogue life.  In other words, excluded from connections that made life meaningful and good.

Jesus looks beyond Levi’s type.  Jesus looks.  Jesus notices.  We sang before Christmas, “My soul magnifies the Lord, for he has noticed me.”  He’s noticed me.  This is no casual glance.  The word translated saw here has the sense of gaze, a steady look filled with purpose and intent.  Jesus looks beyond Levi’s type, and he looks beyond what might be judged or assumed by appearance alone.  Jesus sees someone who is in need of grace.

And who isn’t in need of God’s grace?  Who isn’t in need of God’s unmerited favour and goodness and love and mercy?  To follow Christ is to desire to grow in Christlikeness.  Who around us in need of a visible and tangible reminder of the grace of God?  I read an article this week about loneliness and social isolation.  Research from the National Institute on Ageing finds that 58% of Canadians over 50 have experienced loneliness, and 41% are at risk of social isolation.  Locally, “A recent meeting of the Toronto Board of Health heard that 400,000 city residents – about one in seven people – have no family or friends to call on for help.”  God calls on us to notice.  Who is God calling on us to notice?    

The call comes without condition.  “Follow me.”  It’s a radical call and a radical reaction on Levi’s part.  “And he got up, left everything, and followed him.” (5:28). Levi is a means of means, and the call to follow Jesus is for everyone, including people of means.  Someone has said, “Unlike many preachers who wait for the rich and powerful to experience a reversal of fortune before speaking to them of God’s reign, Jesus’ word to the rich and powerful creates the reversal of their lives.”  He got up, left everything, and followed him.  What is it that we need to leave behind in order to make room for God to create a reversal in our lives? Levi’s actions demonstrate the reversal that Jesus has brought to his life.  Levi goes from his tax booth where he collects money for himself, his bosses, and their Roman bosses, to opening up his house and providing a celebratory feast.  “We had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life, he was lost and has been found.” (15:32)  Let us not miss the celebratory aspect of our own gathering around Jesus’ banquet table this morning.  A new allegiance, or a new found allegiance.  A new way of living and loving.  Transformed lives together.  These things call for a celebration!

“Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax- collectors and others sitting at the table with them.” (5:29)  This is the thing about eating with Jesus in the Gospel of Luke.  Everyone is welcome.  Tax collectors and others as they are described in our story this morning.  Tax collectors.  Pharisees.  Those who have been forgiven and come in gratitude.  Those who are in need of forgiveness and wholeness.  These meals are not always peaceful.  They’re sometimes marked by debate and even rebuke.  The thing is, though, no one is ever rejected or ejected by Jesus.  Not even Judas.  Jesus extends a welcome that abolishes concepts of an in-group and an out-group or an us vs. them.  The Great Physician is making a house call so that all may be loved into the Kingdom of God, so that repentance (a turning toward him) and transformation may happen. The Pharisees and their scribes are looking on.  Banquets in those days had a bit of a public aspect to them.  It was just the way houses were constructed.  More open.  The Pharisees and their scribes are seeing what’s happening and they don’t look behind types.  Rather than seeing people in need of the grace of God, they see an in group and an out group, and they’re most decidedly part of the in group.  They don’t voice their complaint directly to Jesus but to his disciples. Peter, James, John and Levi, presumably at least, at this point.  “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

At which point Jesus says “Hold my cup.”  “I’ll field this one,” says Jesus.  He is about to speak a fundamental truth about the reign of God.  The doctor is indeed in!  “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.”  (5:31-32) 

The Pharisees and their scribes were seeing the people around Jesus as types – as tax collectors and sinners.  The “them” to their “us.”  What Jesus is inviting them (and all of us) to do is a new way of seeing others and ourselves.  We are all of us people who are in need of God’s grace.  “Those who are well have no need of a physician,” Jesus says in a mini-parable here, “But those who are sick.”  If you think you’re alright, in other words, Jesus’ call to follow him is not going to mean very much.  My only question at that point would be, “Are you really alright?”  Or perhaps we’re like people who avoid the doctor because we don’t want to hear any bad news.

Of course, it’s all good news from this doctor.  “I’m not alright,” we say.  “I need you Lord,” we say.  Every day.  Every hour.  To this, Jesus says, “Come to me and I will give you rest.”  To this, Jesus says, “I am with you always.”  To this, Jesus welcomes us to his table and says, “This is my body given for you, and this is my blood shed for you.”  “Follow me,” says Jesus.  May our coming to the table this January 7^th, 2024, be a sign of our acceptance of this call, whether it’s ongoing acceptance or acceptance for the first time. 

Finally, may our welcome at this table spur us on to extending welcomes at other tables.  If you’re like me, meals that were shared around the holidays were with people very much like you, and maybe related to you.  How can we (both as individuals and churches) extend invitations to fellowship around tables with people we don’t know or who aren’t in many ways like us, knowing that we share our need for God’s grace?  How might God call us to extend that grace in gathering around tables in 2024?  Jesus will be at those tables.  The physician is in and he will see us now.  Healing and wholeness are at hand.  Repentance – a turn toward a new way of life and love- and transformation are the prognosis.  May the invitation to follow and sit and share with him be one we all accept.

Amen

I would add that chapters such as this one remind us that in Christ we are part of something larger than ourselves.  To feel the need, or to feel purpose and fulfillment in belonging to something larger than ourselves Is widely known, and widely sought in many different things and places.  I would maintain that these things are true because this is how God has made us.  It can be good to be pointedly reminded of being part of something larger than ourselves and our own joys/sorrows triumph/struggles. 

In 2018 Nicole and I got to visit Ireland. In Dublin we had a chance to see the Book of Kells, which is an illuminated or illustrated copy of the Gospels which was made around the year 800.  I bought the guidebook and the poster (though not the tshirt) which gives you an idea of what it looks like, and it’s beautiful.  It’s beautiful to think that in the middle of what they call Europe’s Dark Ages, scribes and artists were working away on this.  Each day, Trinity College (where the Book of Kells is housed) will put some pages on display in a glass case.  On the day we went, they were from the Gospel of Luke, specifically Luke 3 which is the genealogy of Jesus.  A fairly long list of names.  Not only did I feel connected to the monk or whomever had copied these words (they’re in Latin), but I also felt a connection which transcended time and geography with the people listed in Luke 3.  I’ll never forget this and was moved almost to the point of tears (and definite choked-upness).

Paul believed in and promoted the good greeting, and we see here that he also believed in and promoted the good good-bye.  Paul is calling these people to mind, and he’s calling them to heart and he wants to make sure they know it.  There is a significance in being named and being recognized.  How often do we see people at awards shows who start to thank people and don’t want anyone to be left out?  One night at one of our Bible studies I began to name people around the table for some reason.  As I got to naming about half of us, our brother Peter who was sitting beside me said “Might as well go ahead and name everyone now!”  These were wise words.  There is a significance in being named.    

There is a significance to being remembered by name.  I encourage all of us to spend time with this chapter, to sit with this list of people who Paul has named here.  For those of us who are in the autumn or winter of our years, may it bring to mind those who are alongside us in the faith and those that have been alongside us.  For those of us in the spring and summer of our years, may it call to mind those alongside us and how we might look back on them one day.  Paul looks back in this chapter, he looks around at his present, and he looks ahead too.  There’s no reason we can’t do all three simultaneously.  Look at the names, starting with our sister Phoebe, a deacon/servant/minister/leader of the church at Cenchreae (and likely the deliverer of the letter).  A benefactor of many and of Paul himself.  Twenty-six people named plus two (Rufus’ mother and Nereus’ sister).  Five groups which are considered house churches.  Men and women holding positions of leadership and apostleship (!).  Singles.  Couples.  Names that generally denoted slaves or freed slaves.  Households of persons of distinction like Aristobolus – possibly the grandson of Herod the Great and friend of Emperor Claudius – and Narcissus – thought to be a well known freedman who was part of Emperor Claudius’ inner circle.  All of these brothers and sisters living in the capital of the Empire.  Gentiles.  Jewish followers of Christ like Andronicus, Junia and Herodian whom Paul calls “relatives.”  Brothers and sisters in Christ who had worked hard, fellow workers, dear friends, beloved, first convert to Christ in Asia, fellow prisoners, outstanding among the apostles, tested and approved, been like a mother to Paul.  Rufus’ mother.  Could this be the same Rufus who was the son of Simon of Cyrene who carried Jesus’ cross – making his mom Simon of Cyrene’s wife?  We’ll know one day.

What we have here in this list of names is a picture of a family of faith united in the love of God.  Paul uses the description “in Christ” four times (3,7,9,10).  We see “In the Lord” five times (8,11,12,12, 13).  Paul has no problem describing people as “beloved” or “my beloved” (5, 8, 9, 12).  Paul describes two activities which lend themselves to bringing us closer.  Working together (3, 9) and suffering together (4,7).

What we have here is a picture of a church that is reflective of the vision that was given to John in Revelation 7:9-10 – “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.  They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”  The family of faith praising God with one heart rooted and grounded in the heart of God, and with one voice!  Christ has broken down dividing walls.  Too often we want to reconstruct them or put up new ones.  Let unity in diversity in Jesus be the mark of the church – this church and every church.

“Greet one another with a holy kiss.  All the churches of Christ greet you.” (16)  There is a Zulu greeting which is “Sawubona.”  It means “I see you.”  I acknowledge you.  You’re important to me.  I value you.  The response is “Nghikona.”  I’m here.  The greeting speaks of the importance of directing our attention to another person.  Acknowledge one another.  How vital is this for us in a culture where all too often people are unacknowledged, particularly in the city?  I saw a news item recently.  It was a police traffic stop in rural Michigan.  A young man was behind the wheel of his car, alone.  One officer said to him “Are you doing ok?  You don’t seem like you’re doing very well.”  The young man replied, “I could use a hug.”  The officer said “Well come out here.”  The young man began to break down.  By the time he was in the officer’s arms he was sobbing.  People are longing for connection.

Greet one another with a holy kiss.  A culturally appropriate, chaste, affectionate, greeting.  John Bertram Phillips, an English Bible translator and Anglican priest, put it this way: “Give one another a hearty handshake all round for my sake.”  Of course these days even British soccer managers are hugging each other (bro hugs at least).  Bro hugs all around!  Eugene Peterson said “holy embraces all around!”  What is the appropriate response to this call from Paul?  It will vary.  For me and little Isabelle, we greet one another by me lifting here as high above my head as I can.  The appropriate response will vary.  Let us be discerning as we follow Paul’s call here to greet one another.  Paul calls on the Christians in Rome to continue to be discerning.  The last “I urge you brothers and sisters” in the letter comes in v17.  I plead with you.  I urge you.  Be vigilant.  “Keep an eye on those who cause dissensions and offenses, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned; avoid them.”  How does this go with “Welcome one another?”  Our acceptance is never to be simply blind.  Paul is calling here for vigilance, for separation if necessary, and discernment.  Someone has described what Paul is getting at like this:

“In particular, he wants the church to grow up and learn how to understand, in love and good sense, that there is an ever-present danger of false teaching in the church. Coupled with this there is, of course, an ever-present danger that people will imagine false teaching where there is none, or will label as ‘false teaching’ something which just happens not to coincide with the particular way they are used to hearing things said. Recognizing these wrinkles and possibilities is part of learning to be both wise and innocent. But noting the dangers of wrong analysis doesn’t mean there isn’t after all such a thing as false teaching. There is, and it matters.”

Be wise in what is good, guileless in what is evil.  Be wise as serpents, gentle as doves, as Jesus put it.  We are not called to naivete, and neither are we called to boundless cynicism.  Let us continue to ask the questions “What does ‘the good’ call for here?  What does the love of God and the love of one another and the love of ourselves call for here?”  Remembering that we are called to do this discerning as we are called to do everything – together as members of one body in Christ Jesus, in Christ and belonging to one another.  Looking around and looking ahead as Paul reminds us that “the God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet.”  How can we speak of a God of peace crushing something?  Is this not too much of a paradox even for us?  This is a reminder that is only through the destruction of evil and the father of lies (the deceiver, the accuser) and the evil which is brought about by his lies (self-interest, oppression, self-indulgence, injustice, self-worship) that peace is attained.  The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet.  We cry out “How long O Lord?” with assured expectation that while the victory is won, the victory is yet to be won.  While the victory has yet to be won, the victory is won.  While we await the renewal of all things, we see signs of new life and reconciliation and victory all around us. We see these things in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ – may this grace be with us.

Just as the grace of God was with Timothy, who greets them, along with Lucius and Jason and Sosipater.  We then hear from Tertius, who’s been writing everything down for Paul.  I wonder what their editing process looked like?!Gaius, who hosts not only Paul but the whole church says hi, and we’re thankful for those among us with houses big enough to host everybody.  Erastus, the city treasurer and our brother Quartus, greet you. So we come to the end, and we end with praise.  “Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ.”  Let us remember and be reminded always of our centre dear family.  He alone is able to strengthen us, to establish us.  We can’t do it on our own and thanks be to God that we don’t have to.  Then this aside about the good news – one last one!  Paul ends where he started, with news of God’s delivering, reconciling, saving, reconciling plan – announced by prophets, fulfilled in Christ, open to all.  “According to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages, but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith…”

This is the God in whom we trust.  1-3)  

Do we believe this?  This is our Lord.  This is the God to whom we belong.  This is the God whom we serve.  This is wisdom.  “Now to God, to the only wise God…”  Among many wisdom claims, here is wisdom.  There is only the wise God, who created all things, and understands how all things work.  This God knows and loves us.  This God walked among us and understands who we are and what we think, along with what has gone wrong.  This God has acted to make things right.  This God is acting to make things right, and will one day act to make all things right, at which point all creation will leap for joy.

How else should we respond but to love and serve and praise together?  The Christians of Rome were part of a tiny movement, and we can identify.  It was an exciting movement, full of all the possibilities of God for whom nothing is impossible.  Dangers and challenges were all around, and we can identify.  Their togetherness in Christ reminded them day after day that they were part of, as someone has said, “a family whose love and faith and hope would win the day.”

To the only wise God, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit of God, be the glory forever!  And all God’s people said,

Paul brings it to the level of the every day, and all these lofty truths which we have been discussing and praying about are meant to affect the everyday.  The ending of the letter of Romans reminds us that the good news of Christ Jesus does not exist by itself.  The good news of Christ Jesus is not simply a good idea or a theory.  It was embodied in a unique way in a  person who was born in Bethlehem.  It was embodied in a man called Paul, who lived it and wrote about from Corinth to a group of people who received the good news in Rome around 58AD.  It is embodied in us in whom the Spirit of Christ lives, and we have spent the last few weeks examining and sitting with and praying over what this means in our day-to-day lives in the city of Toronto or wherever we may be.  In this letter, we are hearing the Apostle Paul in a particular place and at a particular stage in his life.  We are hearing in a particular place and at a particular stage of our lives.  Isn’t this at least partly why the good news of Jesus is always new? 

The good news of Jesus gives life a certain kind of importance.  It makes every moment matter, potentially, at least.  We go back to the idea of the centrality of Christ, the Pantocrator of which we spoke last week – the centrality of Christ in a life where all of life is lived as worship of God, with the living Spirit of God in us.  I read an interview with Bob Dylan recently that made me wonder about how I spend my own time, and that reminded me of what a centrality of the good news of Jesus brings to our lives.  Here’s what he said – “I’m not a fan of packaged programs or news shows, so I don’t watch them.  I never watch anything foul-smelling or evil… I’m a religious person.  I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church.  I believe in damnation and salvation… The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it…For my part, none of this imagery makes me feel afraid, guilty, or judgemental.  It makes me feel alive.  It wakes me up.  It makes me feel that everything I do today matters.  Life feels full of adventure, significance, and portent.  Today has an edge.  My heartbeat is eschatological.  My pulse is apocalyptic.”

Whew!

We need (I need) to come back to the centrality of the good news of Christ.  Paul never forgot the vital importance of relationships in the Kingdom of God, and we’re going to see this in a larger way next week as we look at his good goodbye in chapter 16.  Here at the beginning of the passage we read today, Paul tells his brothers and sisters that he feels confident about them. “I myself feel confident about you, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.”  Even if this confidence is not based on Paul’s personal knowledge of this church, Paul is confident in the power of God through the Holy Spirit of God to fill them with all joy and peace in believing so that they may abound in hope.  This was the prayer which we prayed for one another last week, and we believe in the power of God to do this.  We can say the same thing confidently about each other, can’t we?  Filled with goodness.  Filled with all knowledge.  Able to instruct one another.  Why, then, are we spending 14 weeks (and some have spent much longer!) on examining this letter together?  “Nevertheless on some points (not all points but many points), I have written to you rather boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister (a servant) of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles….”  Because no longer how long we have been following Christ we need reminding.  We need to hear the old story in a new way.  To hear and grasp the same thing in a different way.  To be made new.  To be enabled to walk in newness of life – a life where each may have eternal significance.  A life in which purpose and meaning is found through the grace and mercy of God in every act of mercy, kindness, compassion, love.

I saw the Banshees of Inisherin recently and there is a lot going on in that movie, not the least of which is questions about faith.  At one point, Brenden Gleason’s character Colm Doherty is having an argument with Colin Farrell’s character Patrick Sullivan about creating great art versus “being nice.”  Colm maintains that what is most important in terms of being remembered is creating an artistic piece that will last.  He’s trying to write a song for violin and voice which is where the movie gets its title.  Patrick is maintaining that it’s important to be nice, to which Colm responds that no one remembers anyone from the 17^th century who was nice.  They remember composers who wrote great works.  In the light of God’s Kingdom, Colm can’t be more wrong.  Jesus tells us that in his Kingdom, even something as seemingly mundane as a cup of water offered in His name takes on eternal significance. 

So we need to come back to the good news constantly – to be reminded constantly.  Listen to Paul in our passage – “because of the grace given to me by God,” “For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me,” “by the power of the Holy Spirit of God,” “Thus I make it my ambition to proclaim the good news….”  We may be reminded of what Paul had written to the people of Corinth about the centrality of the good news of Christ in his life and work – “For I decided to know nothing among you among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”  Our model.  Our enablement.  Our deliverer.     

I know we’re not Paul, but his desire to keep the good news of Jesus is one for us to emulate and pray to God for.  We may not be called to preach and write but all of us are called to live the good news of God’s mercy out and be able to speak of it when we’re called on to speak of it.  NT Wright, in his commentary on the Romans, puts the good news which was shared by Paul like this:

“He (Paul) was telling them the extraordinary news that there was one true God rather than the multiplicity of pagan deities, that this one true God had made the world, still loved it, and was bringing it justice and hope, and that this God, to fulfil this plan, had sent his own son, his own second self, to suffer the fate of a rebel against the empire and now to be enthroned as the world’s true Lord. To say that he has written boldly at some points in the letter (verse 15) is to say, why change the habit of a lifetime? Paul had been speaking and acting boldly ever since he had met the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus.”

May we act and speak boldly.  Paul’s desire was for this news to spread to wherever it hadn’t been heard.  He was kind of a Littlest Hobo of apostles – always on the move, seeking out new territory.  The farthest western territory in the world, as far as it was known to the Roman Empire, was Spain.  He first needs to head east, which at first glance seems counterintuitive.  It’s in the completely wrong direction and travel was difficult and slow.  “At present,” Paul writes, “I am going to Jerusalem as a ministry to the saints.”  Paul had been taking up a collection of money to help the poor among the saints in Jerusalem and he wanted to deliver it personally.  It was a big deal.  We’ve been talking about reciprocity and mutuality in the life of those who follow Christ.  The good news of Christ is for everyone, and this has been demonstrated in Gentiles (in other words, everyone else) coming to share in the spiritual blessings promised to the original covenant people (the people of Israel) through Christ – in whom there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all are one in Christ.  It is this message of unity in our difference rooted and grounded in Christ Jesus that Paul has been coming back to and that we will keep coming back to.  Remember how Paul started the letter, talking about the good news of Jesus being the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greeks.  Gentile followers of Christ have shared their material blessings with their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem, from whom came their spiritual blessings.  This surely should make us think about how we share material and spiritual blessings with one another?!

Paul fears opposition.  There’s a chance that his life will be in danger as it has been in danger before.  There’s a chance that the money he is bringing from Gentile followers of Christ will not be accepted in Jerusalem because it didn’t come from the right kind of people.  The collection of money and Paul’s interest in bringing it himself are pointing to a truth beyond the money and Paul’s presence – there are to be no second-class citizens in the Kingdom of God.  We’ve spoken of the family of God and the body of Christ.  We all perform different functions and we are not to be ranked based on what our function is.  There is much work that goes on in the family of God that is unheard and unseen and we are to be thankful for each and every one.

Paul makes a prayer request here to the Romans, that they would pray for his safety and that the gift he’s bringing will be accepted.  A prayer for safety and unity.  Paul doesn’t say something like, “Remember me in your prayers.”  The way Paul makes the request is more like “Struggle with him” in prayer.  One’s struggle is the struggle of all of us in the family of God.

Paul ends with these words, “So that by God’s will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company.  The God of peace be with all of you.  Amen” 

Paul would never get to Spain, as far as he knew.  He planned to get to Spain by way of Rome and be refreshed in the company of his Roman sisters and brothers.  Paul would get to Rome, but it would be in Roman custody.  A group of believers would meet him outside the city as he was on his way – “And so we came to Rome. The believers from there, when they heard of us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us.  On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage.” (Acts 28: 14b-15)  What Paul planned for in Spain never took place, but there is a final lesson for us in this passage as we close.  God may use what we do in service of plans that we have, even if the plans never come to fruition.  Paul never got to Spain, but in preparing to go, he wrote this letter to Rome which has become so precious to the church.  As someone has said, “We should never underestimate what God will do through things which we see as small steps to a larger end.”

The only thing that remains is the good goodbye.  In the meantime, may our words and deeds reflect God’s ways, and may God use all our steps toward His merciful ends, and may this be true for us all.

Amen

A dear mother (and mother-in-the-faith and mother-in-law) from the Greek Orthodox tradition once asked the question of a Baptist, “Why do you spend so much time talking about Jesus?”

Of course, in the Orthodox tradition, they talk about Jesus too.  There is an icon of Christ which is called “Pantocrator.”  This is a word that appears a lot in the book of Revelation and is also used in the Greek OT to translate “Lord of Hosts” or “Almighty God.”  Literally translated, it means ruler of all.  In a Greek Orthodox church, the Pantocrator icon is often painted in the central dome.   This is a good place to have it and I’m going to put it up on our screen. 

We are coming to the Lord’s Table today.  To come to a table and eat is a sort of homecoming, isn’t it?  I hope it is.  I hope our experience of coming to tables is like coming home or being at home.  To come to Jesus is to come home.  To come to Jesus is to come to the one who is our host as we come to our family table.  It might be a return home for us, and that’s fine.  It’s better than not returning home.  It may be part of an ongoing orientation toward Christ in which we live, and I pray that God will bring us all to such an ongoing orientation – that all of life worship which Paul started this section of his letter off with back in chapter 12.  For some, it might be the first time we orient ourselves toward Jesus as Lord and say, “You are my Lord.  I give my life to you.”

Whatever our situation, it is a kind of coming home.  A place where we are loved unconditionally, accepted, understood, carried along.  Home for the follower of Christ is a place where we are carried in the same way that a shepherd carries a lamb against his chest.  We are called to carry along each other’s burdens as we are all carried along by Christ.  How, then, shall we live?  How are we called and enabled in Christ to live?  This is the question that we’ve been looking at for the past several weeks and we will continue to ask the question and ask God to give us wisdom.  Paul is not at the end of the paraenesis section of his letter to the 1st-century Christians of Rome.  We’ve heard about how we are to live with regard to one another – belonging to Jesus and belonging to one another.  We’ve heard about how we are called to live with regard to our enemies and those who would persecute us.  We’ve heard about how we are called to live with regard to the civil authority.  We’ve heard about how we are called to live when we disagree.  We’ve heard, “As far as it is possible, live in peace with everyone.”  We’ve heard, “Owe nothing to anyone except love.”  We’ve heard “Put on Christ.”  I don’t suppose we would be wanting to walk on a picture of Jesus, but if we could, it might be fitting to have a an image or representation of Jesus underneath us.  Underpinning, undergirding all that we have been discussing and praying about - is Jesus.

Paul finishes off the discussion of the weak and the strong that he had in chapter 14 (and that we had last week).  We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.  This is a bit of an unfortunate translation of the word that Paul uses, which is “carry,” or “bear,” or “uphold,” or “sustain” the failings of the weak.  Paul is not saying “put up with” in the sense of “grin and bear it” while harbouring inner disdain.  The word is the same one that’s translated “bear one another’s burdens” in Galatians 6:2.  Carry one another along rather than please yourselves, says Paul.  Again we are not to absolutize this and say that anything goes or we must put up with anything.  Paul has been talking about non-make-or-break matters concerning how the Christian life is led in, which we are called to neither judge nor despise.  “Each of us must please our neighbour for the good purpose of building up the neighbour.” (15:2) 

This lead to another question that should always be before us.  Are our words and actions building up, or are they tearing down?  Do we want to build up or tear down?  God grant that the answer is always build up.  Note here that Paul is talking to everyone now.  Each of us must please our neighbour for the good purpose of building up the neighbour.   It’s not simply a matter of let those who are strong build up those who are weak (or those perceived to be strong and those perceived to be weak).  Each person has something to contribute. There is a reciprocity here in the building of one another up.  Someone brand new in the faith has something to do or say to build someone up who has been following Christ for decades.  Don’t we see this truth borne out in our discussions that we have?  Isn’t it wonderful to hear someone newly following Jesus express the kind of thanks and wonder at God’s grace that we might have become all too used to?  There is a reciprocity and a mutuality in our being built up.

We say that the church is not about a building but we might equally say it’s about building.  The people of God being built on our foundation.  Our home base.  Our key of C.  The place that we always come home to.  Christ Jesus.  “For Christ did not please himself.”  Our model.  Our enablement.  Paul comes back to where he started and where we started with him all those months ago.  The good news of Jesus.  “The gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared  to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness (because we talk about the God and the Holy Spirit too, of course!) by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (1:3-4)  There is a prayer written by Jane Austen called “Another Day Now Gone,” which contains these lines.  We were talking about prayer posture last week, praying on our knees or on our faces, and this might be a good time for such a posture – “Incline us, oh God, to think humbly of ourselves, to be severe only in the examination of our own conduct, to consider our fellow-creatures with kindness, and to judge of all they say and do with that charity which we would desire from them ourselves.”

On what basis do we make such a prayer?  On the basis of the One who loves us to death, even death on a cross.  On the basis of the One.  For Christ did not please himself.  Let each of us look not to our own interests but to the interests of others.  This is revolutionary stuff in a world where all too often, self-interest rules the day.  In a world where so many relationships are transactional – based on what’s in it for me or what’s in it for both of us if we’re really morally upright.  We’re used to the practice and language of exchange in so many of our relationships.  The exchange that has happened is Jesus exchanging God’s form for the form of a servant in order that we might be brought home. 

“For Christ did not please himself; but, as it is written, ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.’”  This is from Psalm 69:9.  Christ identified himself with the weak, with the rebellious, with God’s enemies – in other words, us – by not pleasing himself but praying, “Not my will but yours be done.”  He is our enablement and He is our pattern.  “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.” (15:4)  The Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament is the earliest part of the story that we live in as followers of Christ – the roots out of which we have grown which point ahead to Christ.  They are there to instruct and encourage us – to remind us of the promises that were made and how those promises have been fulfilled in Jesus.  NT Wright puts it like this: “ the whole Old Testament forms the God-given story of how the covenant people were called to bring God’s salvation to the good but fallen creation. This necessarily involved them, and would necessarily involve their ultimate representative, the Messiah, in terrible suffering, standing at the place where the world, and humankind in particular, was in pain with its own rebellion and failure. Now that the Messiah had come and had achieved what the whole Old Testament had been moving towards, the Bible could be read not as a puzzling story in search of an ending but as the foundation for God’s great achievement in Jesus.”

We then have the first of two great prayer/blessings in this section of chapter 15: “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus. So that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  What a great prayer.  Look at what’s going on in this prayer.  The people of God are glorifying with one voice.  What does this mean practically?  Surely a life together of praise and worship of God.  Surely a life together of regular praise and worship of God that reflects our unity in the love of Christ and unity in the Spirit of God.  It doesn’t mean uniformity of thought of practice, as we’ve been saying in previous weeks. It’s not so much thinking the same thing as each other as it is having a mindset of love toward one another that works itself out in what we do.  With one mind.  With one mouth.  Describing unanimity in praise and worship that shows to the watching world that hope and joy, and peace are here.  That God is here.  One voice is not simply because it’s good to be united, but so that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ will be glorified – in other words, so that the love, peace, joy, hope, faithfulness, justice, mercy of God and Jesus the Pantocrator and the Holy Spirit would be present and would be made known.

That we may experience a homecoming and that we might invite others to experience a homecoming – to taste and see that the Lord is indeed good.  That God’s purposes for humanity might be revealed in us.  “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”  That God’s plan would be made known.  God’s plan to reconcile all things to Himself in Christ – to bring back all things to Himself in Christ.  In the second part of our text this morning, Paul goes over how this plan was promised to the patriarchs.  Remember the words to Abraham – “I will make of you a great nation through which all the nations of the world will be blessed.”  God’s plan was always about inclusion rather than exclusion or exclusivity. “For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify Go for his mercy.” (15:8-9)  What does this mean?  God would work through a covenant people, making and keeping promises and demonstrating His truth/faithfulness -  to bring about deliverance which is open to all – showing God’s mercy/steadfast love.  The two essential elements for Paul, as someone has said, of who God is.

Truth and mercy.  Faithfulness and steadfast love.  May we never get used to this or take it for granted.

This was always the plan.  As it is written (read 9-12).  These verses referencing 2 Samuel, Deuteronomy, the Psalms.  The final one from Isaiah 11, which we hear very often at Christmas.  The shoot from the root of Jesse, who rises (the word for resurrection there) to rule the Gentiles.  All are welcome into his rule, his realm.  Self-giving, self-emptying love so that all might be welcomed.

How critical is it that the church be place where the welcome of God is enacted?  We thank God for when we see this.  It is in community that we witness what God has done, is doing, and one day will do in reconciling all things to himself.  The world is longing for and crying out for peace and hope, and deep-seated joy.  Someone has said that a world looking for hope and peace and joy will look to where these things are evident. If they are not clearly evident in our life together, how can we invite others to them?  We don’t have to manufacture unity ourselves but orient ourselves together toward the one in whom our unity is found.  May we be reminded of this truth this morning.  May we meet Jesus at this table, and may he be revealed to us the same way he revealed himself at a table to those two disciples in a town called Emmaus.  The only thing left in the letter is to say goodbye, and we’ll spend a week or two on the goodbye.  For now, let us repeat to one another Paul’s prayer, and may this be the cry of our hearts for one another.:

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (15:13)

And all God’s people said, “Amen!’

It is more important to love than to be right. Pay attention to the part that really matters.

Welcome one another according to the example of Christ.  How not to be jerk/judge/despise.

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. (with a nod to my brother George)

As we look at chapter 14, there are two verses that we should keep in mind from chapter 13.  We didn’t read them last week, as we were looking specifically at how followers of Christ are called to relate to civil authority.  Here they are, though, and they are key.  The first is 13:8 – “Owe no on anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”  As followers of Christ, we belong to Christ.  As fellow members of the body of Christ, we belong to each other, and we owe to one another a debt.  This debt is to love and we never pay it off (it’s not that kind of debt).  I owe you love.  You owe me love.

The second verse that I’d like for us to keep in mind comes at the end of the chapter, and it is part of verse 14 – “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Jesus and the mercy of God in Jesus is at the heart of everything we’ve been looking at since January 8^th.  In the verse before, Paul lists what the opposite of putting on Jesus looks like using day/night imagery and he says this – “Let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling or jealousy.  Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ…”  Put on the armour of light is how Paul puts it here.  Elsewhere Paul talks about us putting on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience.  Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony…” (Col. 3:12. 14)  I love this image and should think of it more often as I’m getting dressed.

Coming back to Romans, note that quarrelling and jealousy comes at the end of the list.  We would be in pretty solid agreement that getting wasted or out of our heads is probably not the kind of thing we should be engaged in as followers of Christ.  Debauchery should be avoided.  Overindulgence of the senses not a good thing.  What about cutting ourselves off from one another, though?  What about holding each other in contempt or judgement based on how we feel the Christian life is to be lived, or how the church should be run for that matter?  How about refusing to welcome one another or ignoring invitations to come around tables together when we disagree about things?

We will disagree about things.  Paul is continuing to talk about what a grace-shaped life looks like.  In our passage today, he’s talking about what a grace-shaped life looks like in the family of faith when we disagree on things.  He’s not talking about disagreeing on matters that are essential to Christian faith.  If you were to ask me, “What are the matters that are essential to the Christian faith,” I would point to one of the creeds of the church.  He’s not talking about these matters and the people to whom he is talking are not wavering in their faith in these matters.  A disagreement is happening and the disagreement is about how one properly responds to the good news of Jesus in matters of daily life.  In this case, what one eats, what one drinks, and what days are recognized as set apart.  Here’s how NT Wright describes the situation:

“Paul is addressing a situation which will be depressingly familiar to many who work within the church as well as many who work outside it. In this verse, he seems to turn from one party to the other. Here is a Christian with a strict conscience, whose background, upbringing and temperament all incline him towards a very serious view of his moral responsibilities. As far as he can see… the Christian is surrounded by a very wicked, corrupt pagan world. The best thing to do is to shun it completely; and if that means not touching meat, so be it. He then notices that this woman over here, who apparently claims to be a Christian as well, is buying, from the market, meat which has obviously come from a pagan temple. How appalling… She and her family are deeply compromised! The only response is condemnation. The Christian woman, meanwhile, has been taught the deep and rich truth that the one true God is the creator and redeemer of all things. The whole world belongs to him, including every piece of meat you might ever buy or consume. She knows perfectly well that she is called to holiness, to a lifestyle very different from that of the pagan world around. But she knows equally well… that outward regulations about what you can and can’t touch, taste and handle don’t actually go to the heart of genuine holiness... She gets tired of being sniped at and criticized by people who don’t seem to have learned what is, for her, one of the most basic and liberating of the gospel’s lessons. They seem small-minded, timid, unable to see beyond their own front doors. When she thinks of people like that, she despises them.”

Paul is talking about what it means to put on Christ.  He’s talking about what it means that love is the fulfillment of the law.  Paul is talking about what these things mean in the case of disagreements.  This comes to us in a world where, very often, having disagreements means that we don’t like each other.  Disagreement very often leads to enmity. Disagreement leads to division, to being divided into warring camps.  Stigmatization.  Labelling.  “Not so with you,” as someone once said. We’re not sure what the situation was in Rome.  We’re not sure who was in which camp and it really doesn’t matter.  Paul is not paying attention to who is in what camp.  He’s not using labels here.  Too often in we can be reduced to a label.  A denominational label.  I’ve said before there are reasons that I am a Baptist but I’m not primarily defined by being a Baptist.  Worse than that, we label ourselves conservative or liberal.  Progressives or evangelicals until these words become twisted beyond recognition or end up devoid of any real meaning.  Paul doesn’t assign any labels here and he doesn’t condemn anyone for what they believe about eating/not eating.  There is a larger concern here that must never be allowed to remain unaddressed.

Here is the concern.  Those who eat are despising those who don’t.  They are objects of ridicule.  “Look at them, stuck in that way, compared to us, who are so much more advanced!“  Those who don’t eat are standing in judgement over those who do.  “How can they think this type of thing is ok? Are those people even Christians?”  Maybe it goes as far as that. 

What is the thing that primarily defines us all as followers of Christ?  What label do we bear?  That label is child of God.  This is the purpose and fulfillment of life.  God has welcomed me.  God has welcomed you. Let us welcome one another.  Servant or slave of God is how Paul described himself when he began this letter.  We’re primarily defined by being household servants of God.  This is the meaning of the word for servant Paul uses in v4.  Members of the same household.  “Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another,” asks Paul. “It is before their own lord that they stand of fall.  And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.” I said last week that we’re not to absolutize Paul’s words, and none of these words should be taken to mean “anything goes” for us.  They’re not to be taken to mean that when we harm one another we should not seek to be reconciled.  They’re not to be taken to mean that we should make no effort to help one another when we go astray.  Paul is talking about non-essential matters in which one group of people are judging and the other is despising.  Do not let these matters destroy our unity in Christ.  The inner criterion which Paul gives us is that what is done or not done is done or not done in honour of the Lord and to give thanks to God. Our lives belong to God, after all.  Here is the matter of life and death.  We live and we die to the Lord, and so we are the Lord’s whether we live or die.  We belong to Christ, who died and lived again so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. So who am I to judge?  Who am I to despise?  Each of us will be accountable to God for what we have done, who we have welcomed, and what love of God and neighbour looked like in our lives. What have been the issues that have caused us to judge or despise, created divisions among churches or that have caused us to cease to welcome one another?  Drinking or not drinking?  Who is welcome at the communion table?  Dancing or not dancing?    Who can be a pastor?  Who can be a leader?  Who gets married?  One of the things we need to discern together is what constitutes an essential or disputable matter in the first place.  In the midst of all of this is the quote attributed to a 17th-century Lutheran theologian named Rupert Meldenius - “In essentials unity; in nonessentials liberty; in all things charity.”  Whatever the question up for debate is, what Paul is emphasizing here is not the question itself but how we treat one another in the handling of the question.  Be welcoming, and not for the purpose of trying to bring others to one’s own position.  Someone has pointed out that “the kind of quarrelling that Paul rules out is not spirited (to which I would add loving) debate that can lead to greater clarity and understanding, but rather what he rules out is a kind of intellectual competition aimed at bringing about conformity to the dominant position. Welcoming should not bring others into coercive situations, but rather create space for exchange in the context of mutual respect (and I would add love).”

In the background of all of this, we have “Owe no one anything except to love one another” and “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”  We come to the second part of our passage which might be titled just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.  As a follower of Christ, responsibilities we have toward one another trump our individual rights, or even our being right as individuals (although I must say in most if not all cases of “disputable matters,” we need to approach them bearing in mind the possibility that we might be wrong).  It is more important to love another than to be right.  This can be hard to get our minds around.  “Let us not, therefore, judge one another anymore, but judge this rather…” is how the KJV reflects Paul’s wordplay here as he’s using the same word for judge or decide.  If we want to judge something, let us judge, not to cause one another to stumble or hold each other back.  Read 14:13-15.

In the Kingdom of God; in the realm of grace; it is more important to act in love than to exercise my own right.  This may be difficult.  We learn from a young age that it’s good to be right.  We get fulfillment and purpose from being right – it helps us on tests and earns us approval from others.  We live in the realm of the One who did not stand on his rights, even equality with God, but emptied himself of all but love, as the hymn goes.  We are told that we are to forego our own sense of right and rights when it would be to the detriment of our brothers and sister who are in Christ along with us and to whom we belong.  This is the external check on our freedom in Christ when it comes to our actions.  The kingdom of good is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.  We are called to pursue this peace in joy together and taking one another into consideration.  Righteousness is not rightness.  Righteousness is being formed in the image of Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant… and acted out of love for God and love for humanity and all of God’s good creation.  This is to be the pattern for our lives.  Someone has put it like this – “Human existence is from now on defined not in terms of solipsistic self-interest but in terms of relatedness to God, to the Lord Jesus, and to those who belong to this Lord. What has this to do with eating certain foods or observing certain days? For Paul, the essential point is not the doing or not doing but whether either is done “for God” and “in thanksgiving to God” (14:6). But “not living for the self ” also changes our understanding of life together. We learn that righteousness is not a matter of “being right” but a matter of “being in the right relationship.”

“Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up,” is how Paul put it most succinctly (1 Cor 8:1).  The limit of our freedom of faith in Christ is the good of our fellow follower of Christ.

1. What might this mean?  A group of Toronto Christians who have been known to take a drink visit brothers and sisters in the Chapare region of Bolivia, where they do not.  What do they do?  A young man who is going to play in the praise band is wearing a hat during rehearsals.  Should I ask him to take it off?  A small group is going to celebrate the Lord’s Supper together and wants to drink wine.  There are alcoholics in the group who haven’t taken a drink in decades.  What to do?  We may find our practices changing as we ask what does love call for.  For myself, I have a wide view of who is welcome at the Lord’s Table, as I state each time we gather around it.  When I would find myself in a church that doesn’t have such a wide view, I would disregard their rules and go forward to take communion anyway, knowing how to place my hands in the prescribed way and so on.  I don’t do that anymore.  I decided that my right to be involved shouldn’t supercede where they are in who is allowed to be involved.  I didn’t want any priest to be forced to go against what they believe to be right, even unknowingly. 

Paul is laying down the principles.  May we continue to discern together what they look like in our lives and in our life together.  May God make us people who reflect the mercy and unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and may this be true for every one of us. Amen

Really though, it’s not so much about religion and politics as it is about a life shaped by grace and civil authorities or government.  We continue to ask the question, “What does it mean to live a grace-shaped life?”  Last week we heard what Paul had to tell the Christians of Rome and us about what the mercy of God means for life together.  The focus then shifted out to the wider community, particularly in terms of people who would be persecutors or enemies.  The focus continues to be shifted outward here as Paul turns his attention to governing authorities.  This is a difficult passage, and I’m glad we’re getting a chance to look at it.  There are two things that present difficulties here:

The first is that Paul is writing in a time and place that has no concept of universal suffrage – the right to vote – or representative democracy.  The experience that Paul and his listeners have of government is that of Empire.  It was an Empire that had lasted hundreds of years and would go on to last for a few hundred more in the west (and another thousand years in the east).  There was no concept that government could be changed and that citizens could play a role in changing it.

The second difficulty is that this passage has been used to justify regimes like the National Socialist one in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, or policies like apartheid in South Africa.  A group within the Protestant church in Germany which called itself “German Christians,” used this passage to justify their claim that Christians owed allegiance to Hitler.  To further support this position, they pointed to Martin Luther’s interpretation of this passage in which he wrote: “Christians should not refuse, under the pretext of religion, to obey men, especially evil ones.”  As someone has asked, “Is the Christian under obligation to support whatever policies the governing authorities may deem appropriate, whether those policies are for the good of the people or simply for the purpose of keeping those governing authorities in power?”  The situation becomes further complicated when we consider the many different forms of government under which followers of Christ live today – from despotic regimes to one-party states to liberal democracies.  The situation becomes further complicated still when we consider our own situation in the West; how trust in government and its institutions (even supposedly non-partisan ones like the courts) and politicians, in general, has eroded.

What do we do with this passage?  What don’t we do with this passage?  The first thing we mustn’t do is make any kind of absolute out of Paul’s words, in the way of the “German Christians” of the 1930s and 40s.  As I said, Paul is speaking to a people living under the Roman Empire, which was very far from the universal right to vote and representative democracy.  What we must do is consider this passage in the larger section of Roman in which it sits.  Paul is writing about what it means to live in the mercy and grace of God.  We have just heard, “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.  Never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” (12:18-19) If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.  Following Christ touches on every aspect of life, including those who govern us.  We are not called to radical separation or disengagement from any aspect of society.  Being freed from the law by the grace of God does not mean that we are freed from obeying civil authority.  Live peaceably with all, including the state.  Listen to Jesus’ words here in this story from Matthew 17:

²⁴ When they reached Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax^[a] came to Peter and said, ‘Does your teacher not pay the temple tax?’^[b] 25 He said, ‘Yes, he does.’ And when he came home, Jesus spoke of it first, asking, ‘What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take a toll or tribute? From their children or from others?’ ²⁶ When Peter^[c] said, ‘From others,’ Jesus said to him, ‘Then the children are free. ²⁷ However, so that we do not give offence to them, go to the lake and cast a hook; take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a coin;^[d] take that and give it to them for you and me.’

We might file this under “Just because you don’t have to do something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”  Children of the Kingdom are under the rule of another King.  Pay your taxes as a witness.  “Give therefore to the emperor what is the emperor’s and to God what is God’s,” is how Jesus put it in Matthew 22.  We do well to keep these words in the background here.  Be a good citizen.  Pay your taxes.  Be nice, clear your ice, even if you think you pay enough taxes for the city to do it.  Willingly submit yourselves to governing authorities.  This is an imperative on Paul’s part, not a statement.  He’s not saying, “You are inferior to governing authorities” or “Anything that governing authorities say goes and should be supported, and that’s that for all time and for all situations.”  He's stating two truths here.  The first is actually quite subversive for those of us who are more subversive.  “There is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”  However, the Roman Empire described where it obtained its authority; it was not from the God revealed in the Hebrew scriptures, and the God revealed in Jesus.  To say that they rule because of God’s authority is not to say that everything they do reflects God’s will and God’s ways – it is rather to say that oppression, militarism, oligarchy, kleptocracy, are opposed to God’s will and God’s way and will not have the last word.  To say that all authority is given to God is to say, in the words of MLK Jr, that “The arc of history is long and bends toward justice.”  It is to say remember Jesus’ words as he stood before the representative of Roman authority before which he was about to be sentenced to die “You would have no authority if it weren’t given by my Father.”

The second is that governing authorities exist to maintain order.  When Paul writes, “Rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad” or “It is God’s servant for your good,” he’s not describing all government for all time, but rather the good and benevolent purposes to which all governing authorities should put themselves.  Governing authorities are in place partly, at least, to keep in check the evil which we would do to one another.  God is not a God of anarchy.  This is why we pray that our governing authorities have wisdom and discernment in governing this way.  There is an ancient rabbinical prayer that goes, “Pray for the peace of the ruling power, for without it men would have swallowed up each other alive.”  Early church father Irenaeus said this: “So then earthly authority has been established by God for the benefit of the nations. It has not been established by the devil, who is never at peace himself and has no wish to see the nations living in peace. God’s purpose is that men should fear this authority and so not consume one another as fish do; his intention is that the imposition of laws should hold in check the great wickedness to be found among the nations.”   Paul is writing here of the benevolent purpose to which civil authority should devote itself.  He is not giving a description of every civil authority in each time and place.  We are not to absolutize Paul’s words here.  We remember at the same time the words of Peter and John to the Temple authority in Acts 4:19.  The disciples have just been commanded to stop talking about Jesus, and we read this – “But Peter and John answered them, ‘Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Again, they are brought before the council, where the high priest reminds them of the order that had been given.  Peter and the apostles answer, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”  (Acts 5:29)

Someone has said of Jesus (and by extension, we can apply these truths to ourselves) -  “Jesus is neither a revolutionary zealot nor a servile subject of those who rule.  There is not so much an overtly hostile approach as there is a critical distancing.”   Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s and to God what is God’s sets up a hierarchy in which our primary allegiance is to God.  No matter what we think politically, any system or party or form of government which claims or takes the place of God as foundational to our lives is not giving to Ceasar what is Ceasar and to God what is God’s.  Any calls for allegiance to nation, nationalism, ethnicity, empire, constitution to take the place of God in our lives should be viewed with suspicion at least and outright rejection at most.  Critical distancing on the part of the follower of Christ to forms of governance.  We might even consider it strange when buildings where laws are made or governing documents like constitutions are described as sacred or hallowed.  Is this the kind of language that should be reserved for God?  Paul is not so much giving specific instructions in this section of Romans as much as he is posing the question, “What does a grace-shaped life look like here?”  What does living in the mercy of God look like here?  What does living in the love of God look like here?  What does love of God and humanity and creation look like here?”   These are questions that need to be ever before us, and oftentimes, there are no easy answers.   “Pay to all what is due to them – taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honour to whom honour is due.”   It would seem that this instruction would rule out F Trudeau banners or F Trump video messages of chants of “Let’s Go Brandon.”  These are good words in these days of partisan politics becoming ever more polarised and ever more vicious. 

The more difficult question is, what do these words of Paul and Jesus mean when governments are doing the exact opposite of what they are called by God to do?  What happens when governments are terrors to good conduct?  What happens when governments rule by the sword and fear and coercion?  What happens when civil authority clamps down on human rights or even goes as far as genocide?  The answers have varied and will vary widely depending on circumstance.  For Karl Barth, opposing the Nazi regime meant writing against it in the Barman Declaration – a 1934 document which was a call to resistance against the theological claims being made by the Nazi state and “German Christians.”  For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, endeavouring to live peaceably with all and in the love of God meant taking part in an assassination plot.  For Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights leaders in the US, it meant non-violent protest.  For Franciscan nun Rosemary Lynch, it meant taking part in protests against nuclear testing in Nevada.  Here’s what she had to say about her methods in an article I came across:  “When I asked how she justified breaking the law, she replied: “The real evil is perfecting methods of killing people and destroying God’s creation. Breaking a trespass law — crossing a white line in road miles from the test site — respects the essence of civil law and is obedience to the higher law. Sometimes the law needs help.”  Even here, Sister Lynch sought to live peaceably:  “Rosemary always urged those who commit acts of disobedience to respect those who may feel threatened or be inconvenienced by such actions and to carefully avoid sarcasm, abrasive words, or rude gestures. “It is our policy never to have the kind of blockade where people go limp and thereby compel the police to have to carry us away. We don’t want to call forth hostility in other people. Sometimes people kneel down in the roads to pray. Sometimes we hold up the cross. But when they ask us to stand up, we do so.”

So let us continue to pray together and seek to discern together what it means to give to God what is Gods and give to the emperor, what is the emperors.  For myself, this would include questions like “Is spoiling my ballot to signal that I don’t like any of the people or parties running a grace-shaped response?”  The call on our lives is not disengagement.  We began this section of Romans in chapter 12, looking at personal transformation.  We went on to look at communal transformation – growing in genuine/unfeigned love of God and one another.  This transformation is meant to extend out into the societies in which we live.  In the world but not of the world.  Exiles, but following the words of the prophet to an earlier group of exiles – ⁷ But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jer 29:7)  May God help us to live as His people. Amen

Or, to put it another way, “Let love be genuine.”  To put it even more simply, “The love genuine.”  This is the wording of the original.  There’s not even a command here, more like a statement.  The love unfeigned, undisguised, and sincere.  It’s the same word that we derive hypocritical from.  The love unhypocritical.  The word was used to describe masks that actors would wear.  How much do we know about wearing metaphorical masks?  The love without mask.  What does this mean?

We’re in the part of Romans now in which Paul is talking about what a grace-shaped life looks like for the follower of Christ.  What a mercy-shaped life looks like as we go through our days.  Last week we looked at being living sacrifices.  My life is not my own.  We talked about praying this prayer daily “My life is not my own, Lord, it is yours.”  We talked about this as the good and fitting and proper response to God’s mercy to us in Jesus and through the presence of the Holy Spirit in us.  We shared bread and were reminded that we, who are many in our diversity, are one body in Christ.  Belonging to Christ, we are one body, and individually we are members one of another.  In other words, we belong to one another.  Part of this reality is mutuality.  Serving is mutual.  Encouraging teaching is mutual, and I have been so encouraged by you through the years in this faith family at Blythwood.  A dear sister lent/gave me a book a few years ago called “One Anothering” – what a great title.  Listen to this from the preface – “Who will help the fearful… and rejected… Who will be willing to help carry the load of the other?  Who will give directions to the troubled?  Who will give hope when hope is gone?  God is calling His people to do that!  He calls those who confess His name to be ‘one-anothering’ people.”  This teaching/encouraging was never meant to just go one way (and if you ever give me a book, make sure you let me know if you want it back).

We’re in the paraenesis section of Romans, and Paul is talking about the family of God.  This whole section then bookended by this – “Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good.” (9b)  Then “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (21)

We’re in the “What does this mean in our lives?” part of Romans.  I know that we often like to take the Bible and ask, “How does this apply to my life?”  I think the better question is, what does it mean to apply my life to this?  That is, if it’s even right to talk about my life as mine, given what we looked at last week about being living sacrifices. Perhaps it’s best to put the question like this – “How does life in Christ apply itself to these truths?”

As we said last week, everything we’re reading here is based on what has come before in Paul’s letter.  What has come before is mercy.  What has come before is grace – God’s undeserved favour toward humanity.  What has come before is God’s love for us, from which nothing can separate us.  This is serious stuff.  We’re looking at what it means to take the Christ-following life seriously.  The Christ-following life is more than an interest.  It’s more than simply an activity which we are called to juggle along with all our other activities.  On Christmas Day, we talked about Jesus as the Word, as Light and as Life.  We speak of Jesus as the light by which we are enabled to see everything. 

“Love one another,” said John.  “The love genuine,” wrote Paul.  Agape love – love that is deep and profound and unfailing and transcendent of circumstance and seeks nothing but the good of the beloved.  If we consider John being supported at the front of a church while he gives his one-sentence sermon, we might consider Paul pacing around a room while a scribe struggles to keep up. He’s excited.  What a question! “What does genuine love look like?”  Paul strides back and forth and maybe stops each time one of these truths comes to him.  “Love one another  with mutual affection!”  “Outdo one another in showing honour!”  “Do not lag in zeal!”  “Be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.  Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer!”  “Contribute to the needs of the saints.  Oh, and extend hospitality to strangers.”  “This is good!”  This is who we are called to be.  Someone has said this about Paul’s words here:  “All this is simply a statement of what the love is like for one who follows Jesus, who gives oneself daily to Jesus, and who has a renewed mind…. This is the way a faithful follower of Jesus enacts her or his trust and loyalty. If you claim to follow Jesus, and your life is not like this, you need to undergo some serious self-examination.”

We want to take this seriously.  We long for connection because connection is what God made us for.  Connection with God.  Connection with one another.  Why wouldn’t we take this seriously?  Life lived as life is meant to be lived.  “Love one another with mutual affection.”  (10)  Paul is using family language here.  Philadelphia. The love of brothers and sisters when we are at our best.  The mutual affection of parents and children when we are at our best.  “Outdo one another in showing honour.”  Paul is not talking about competing here like we’re in some sort of sibling rivalry in the church when it comes to showing honour toward one another.  We might better say here, “take the lead in showing honour” or “be out in front in showing honour.”  This in a world where the message is often “I’ll give you the respect you deserve” or “Respect me, and I’ll respect you.”   Take the lead in honouring one another.  “Do not lag in zeal.”  Encourage one another.  What are we putting into one another’s hearts?  “Be ardent in Spirit.”  We have the living fire of the Holy Spirit in us.  Serve the Lord.  All of this being written in the 2^nd person plural – “you all.”  Paul is calling for individual responses within a communal awareness and within communal activity. 

Rejoice in hope.  Rejoice together.  Let us remind one another of the hope which is ours – God’s kingdom comes in its fullness, a new heaven and a new earth, sorrow and mourning fleeing away.  Be patient in suffering.  Be patient with one another in suffering, and that may mean saying something like, “I don’t know what to do or say, but I’ll sit in silence with you.”  Persevere in prayer together.  How are we doing with that?   

Paul is pointedly talking about the community of faith here (although he’s about to cast a wider vision).  Contribute to the needs of the saints.  Things get very concrete here.  If anyone is in need, share what you have with them.  Our sharing in the body and blood of Jesus that we celebrated last week is not simply a celebration but is meant to be worked out in our lives together.  Extend hospitality to strangers.  Welcome one another, just as Christ has welcomed you.  Create hospitable space and invite others in.  Accept invitations to enter into hospitable space because this is one of the ways in which transformation happens.  Have a coffee or tea and tell me how you’re doing.  Sit around tables and eat together.  Have lunch after church.  Let these invitations extend beyond the church in a world where the concept of hospitality is very often left to the hospitality industry.

Let’s make this happen!

Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them.  Again Paul is extending his thinking out here beyond the family of God.  I suppose we can be persecuted from within the church, but surely that is a sign of things having gone terribly wrong!  God save us from inner-church persecution.  Bless them not just with prayers but with actions if we can.  Take the lead in reaching out. 

“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Live empathetically with one another – sharing joys and sorrows.  There’s no regarding sorrow and thinking “better them than me” in this life.  When I hear this verse or ones like it, I’m always transported back to Cochabamba, Bolivia and the Baptist Centre in which we stayed.  In the dining room, there was a wall hanging with this picture and Galatians 6:2 – “Share one another’s burdens, for in so doing you fulfill the law of Christ.”  On the other side, rejoicing with those who rejoice is not always easy.  In our pride, we can envy and even begrudge success.  John Chrysostom said this in a sermon, “… many weep with them that weep, but still do not rejoice with them that rejoice, but are in tears when others rejoice: now this comes from grudging and envy. The good deed then of rejoicing when our brother (or sister) rejoices is no small one.”  You know I’m always preaching to myself too.

As a musician, I like this one – “Live in harmony with one another.”  Every Sunday before we play, Nora, Osmany and I tune our instruments (we get the piano tuned, too but not every week).  We want things to be harmonious and not discordant.  Discord is an audible indication that something is not right.  Live in harmony with one another.  This does not mean everybody thinks the same thing or holds the same opinion on everything.  Paul is not calling for uniformity of thought but uniformity of heart.  Someone has said that this verse is not about thinking the same things as one another, as thinking the same things toward one another, we who belong to Christ and to one another.  It’s about a shared commitment and a shared Spirit, an awareness of our otherness, and a sensitivity to what is different. 

“Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.”  Do not let differences make us think that we are better than.  We heard last week not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.  A mindset of superiority is poison to any community or society, for that matter.  Do not let us think that education, socio-economic status, talent, intelligence, spiritual achievement make us better than.  Do not let us think to ourselves, “I have all the answers.”  Such a mindset inevitably leads to seeking or presuming advantage over others.  We are called to share, rather, humble faithfulness and gratitude to the Christ who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, who humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

This is the God to whom we belong.  This is the God in whom we belong to one another dear family.  He is our peace, and there’s a kind of hinge verse in the middle here which encapsulated the essence of Paul’s words.  “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”  This peace is rooted and grounded in the one who is our Peace.  We finish a lot of services here saying, “Go now in the peace of Christ.”  Paul recognizes, and we recognize, that relational peace is not depended on ourselves.  Part of life that is always necessary to discern for each of us is what is up to God, what is up to us, and what is up to other people.  Live peaceably with all, as far as it depends on us, even our enemies.  Wrath.  Vengeance. Judgement. They’re up to God.  This in a world where the prevailing opinion is generally “Destroy your enemies.”  It’s certainly not “Do good for them.”  Of course, we have to consider how cycles of vengeance work themselves out between people and people groups.  Look at the long-term damage that is done.  Look at how often no end seems to be in sight between people caught in a cycle of violence and vengeance.    “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” were the radical words of Jesus. This is not just about a feeling or a sentiment.  Reducing love to warm feelings or affections here would seem strange, even for the follower of Christ.  Love is meant to be borne out in actions.  Blessing is meant to be borne out in more than words.  “No,” writes Paul, “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this, you will heap burning coals on their heads.”  Now I have to say here there was a time in my life when I read this and said, “Yessssss – burning coals!  Bring it on, mine enemies!”  This is not to fuel some private thirst for revenge.  No one is sure exactly what Paul means, and some have interpreted these words to mean acts of kindness that bring about repentance on the enemy’s part.  Others have pointed to burning coals as symbols of the judgement, which is God’s.  Either way, it’s something good and from God.  Either way, the truth here is that God reached out to us, made the way for us, opened the door for us while we were enemies of God.

It’s not easy, and Paul uses the language of overcoming or conquering in the final verse.  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.  In this struggle, we are lifted up and carried along by God’s grace and mercy.  Let love be genuine.  Paul hasn’t exhausted how this might be made visible in our life together.  How wonderful it is to see love without mask in a community of faith, and we see it week by week.  May God continue to make us a family that is ever more taking on the family resemblance in our attitudes and our actions, and may this be true for all of us.

I don’t tell you this to make myself look good, necessarily.  I have to tell you that sometimes I  feel a twinge of self-righteousness as I go about my self-imposed weight-tidying duties.  When I do, I remember the words of Paul in Romans 12 (because I often think of the words of Paul at the gym – though I have to say I find it a very good time to think about things).  “You better think” is how the song goes.  “Let your mind go/Let yourself be free.”  What does it mean to be free?  What does all this have to do with the words that we hear from Paul in Romans 12?   This is the point of the letter at which Paul turns his attention to what the truths he has been writing about God mean in the daily lives of those who follow Christ.  They call this the paraenesis, and we see it in many of Paul’s letters – the point where he turns to explicit advice or counsel (though it’s more than advice, as we’ll see).  Paul has hinted at it at a couple of points already in the letter, and we looked at these points last year (!) when we began our journey through this wonderful letter.  In 6:4, Paul talked of walking in newness of life. In chapter 8:4-5 Paul talked about living (or walking) according to the Spirit and setting our minds on the things of the Spirit.  Paul has held off going very deeply into what our trust in God means in our lives because he’s been laying down what the basis is for our trust.  Paul is talking about being made new.  It’s not something we restrict to one month of the year because being made new for the follower of Christ is not a human construct.  It’s not something that depends on us.  According to Google research that I conducted, around 80% of New Year’s resolutions are broken by February (I have to say I was a little surprised the number was that low).  Humanity doesn’t do so great on its own.  We were never meant to do it on our own.  This is the story that Paul has been telling through 11 chapters.  It’s a story of mercy.  “Therefore” is a word we hear as chapter 12 begins, and so we consider what has come before.  “I appeal to you…”  The word here is somewhere between a command and a request.  Some translations have “urge.”  The Greek word is the same one that’s used for “please” today – parakalo.  I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the tender mercies of God.  Renewal.  Transformation.  These things are based on God, who God is, and what God has done/is doing/will do.  We don’t do well with transformation if we’re left to our own devices.  Appeals to self-help can sound more like hectoring or self-righteousness on the part of the one making the appeal.  Someone has said, “It is futile to give practical exhortation apart from the basis on which it rests or the spring from which compliance must flow.” 

How true is that?

Paul is now talking about what a grace-shaped life looks like; what a mercy-shaped life looks like.  A grace-shaped life is based on grace.  A grace-shaped life is based on the truth that we just celebrated.  In our rebellion, God refused to abandon us, and God refuses to abandon us.  “By the mercies of God,” Paul writes here in 12:1, and so we continually remember and return to the mercies of God.  Do the mercies of God make us want to break out into praise?  I pray that they do.  Returning to the mercies of God causes Paul to break out into praise just before this exhortation part of the letter begins.  “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable are his ways!  For who has known the mind of the Lord?  Or who has been his counsellor?  Or who has given a gift to him to receive a gift in return?”  Remember our Creator in the days of our youth and indeed all our days!  Then a reminder from Paul with this grand, sweeping statement that tells of how everything that we are comes from God.  Everything we have comes from God.  Everything that exists is the work of God’s hand, and everything that exists is sustained by God’s power and love and grace and mercy.  Everything we do as followers of Christ who have the Spirit of Christ in us can be traced back to God and our acting in loving service to God (so don’t let me feel those twinges of self-righteousness at the gym or at least let them get quashed immediately!).  “For from him and through him and to him are all things.  To him be the glory forever. Amen.”

What, then, does this mean?  How, then, shall we live?  It means transformation.  It means confirmation.  It goes beyond willing ourselves to make a change (or changes if we’re very ambitious).  This to me, is a most welcome message because I have found my own will to be insufficient to the task of transformation.  This goes beyond simply being given a set of rules to follow.  One may hold this misconception about the Christ-following life – that it is weakness or immaturity or hive-mindedness in simply being given an outdated set of rules to follow.  What the Christ-following life is, as Paul is telling us here, is a transformation of the entire person that is meant to effect every aspect of our lives.  It’s always new. We talked about God doing a new thing last week.  God doing a new thing in us based on what God, in God’s mercy, has done, is doing and will do.  Someone has said, “For Paul, the Christian story is a story in which the believer works out what God has worked in.”  God has worked mercy within.  To follow Christ is to know the mercy of God every moment of one’s life.  Let’s take a few moments to be aware of God’s gift – of God’s ongoing sustaining gift.  Breathe…

We’re not simply talking about following a set of new or old rules, although there is an ethical component to this whole thing which we will spend some time on over the coming weeks.  We’re talking about having our consciousness renewed – living in conscious awareness and gratitude for God’s gifts and living out that gratitude moment by moment as we go through our days.

We’re talking about presenting ourselves to God as living sacrifices.  We’re not talking about giving God our time, our talents, our money.  Those things come to us as a gift from God in the first place, and you can’t sacrifice a gift.  I was talking about a carol named “In the Bleak Midwinter” on Christmas Eve.  There’s a great line in that carol that goes, “What can I give him (talking about the Christ child)/Give him my heart.” What I can give him is my life, so that I can say with Paul, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  Dying to self can sound scary, I know.  Dying to self and rising with Christ.  It is the way to life and light and love.  It is the way that has been made by the one who called himself the Way, the Truth and the Life.   It is the way that has been made by the mercies of God.  What is the good and fitting and proper response, then, on our part?  You who have the spirit of God in you.  You who have the mind of Christ in you.

I appeal to you therefore, I urge you therefore, I plead with you therefore.  Sister and brother.  Family of God.  Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.  Made acceptable by the sacrifice of God’s son.  Holy – set apart, called, made right with God through the sacrifice of God’s son.  Offering ourselves daily, not apart from our daily lives but in the middle of our daily lives and all that they bring.  Which is our spiritual worship.  Worship not simply as something we do together (though we do that, and it's vital) but worship as an all-of-life offering to God.  To say to God daily, “My life is not my own, it’s yours.”  Paul wrote to the Galatians, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you were bought with a price; therefore, glorify God in your body.” Gal 6:19-20  What can I give him?  Give to him my heart.  It’s not just about our body and what we do, see, hear, speak.  It’s also about our minds because this Christ-following is an all of life affair.  Do not be conformed to this world.  This does not mean that everything in the world around us is bad or to be shunned or that no good goes on in the world outside the church.  When Paul says “this world” here, it’s reminiscent of his talk of “life in the flesh” vs “life in the spirit.”  Flesh does not mean all material things (including our bodies), but life lived without regard for God as creator and deliverer and source of love and light and life.  “This world” represents the kingdom of the self, the spirit of fear, of hate, of acquisition, of consumerism, of racism, of xenophobia, of if-it-feels-good-do-it, of….

You get the idea.  How easy it is to be conformed when these things are all around us.  Here’s the other side, though – “…but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  This is to think through every aspect of life and ask, “What does a grace-shaped life call for here.”  It is to think through every aspect of life and ask, “What does the love of God and love for neighbour call for here?” 

This is not about us merely resolving to be transformed or changed.  This is not transformation that depends on our own ability or strength of will.  This is transformation that is the work of God in our lives.  We’re not called to transform ourselves.  What we can do it put ourselves in situations and nurture relationships (with God and with one another) in which transformation is more likely to happen.  We are called to follow Christ with one another.  Deliverance.  God’s mercy.  God’s grace.  Salvation.  Whichever word we use, the mercy of God is more than an individual reality.  It is a communal reality.  We’re not called to cut ourselves off from the people of God or pursue Lone Ranger (or lone wolf) Christianity.  Discerning and doing the will of God is as much a communal responsibility as it is an individual responsibility.  This whole time Paul has been speaking in the 2^nd person plural, and we might well have been saying, “I appeal to you all brothers and sisters…”  We are called to be getting the love of God and neighbour right here.  The Christian community is the visible, intimate expression of our life in Christ. 

So, don’t let us think too highly of ourselves.  Let us remember that the very faith we hold is a gift from God.  Let us remember that we are invited to God’s table as people equally in need of God’s grace and mercy.  Paul uses one of his most famous metaphors for the church here – the church as a body.  We have many parts in this body – there is a diversity here, and no part is called to lord itself over another.  We differ in gifts, in temperament, in calling, in background.  It's wonderful to be part of a gathering and stop to consider how God has brought us along the different paths that have led us to this time and this place.  We’re united in this diversity because we share the same faith – the faith of Christ – and the same Spirit – the Spirit of Christ.  “… so we who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” (12:5). Not only do we belong to Christ, but we belong to one another.

More on this next week, but for today let us consider this truth as we prepare to come to God’s table, as we prepare to accept the invitation to this table of mercy and consider what it means.  Someone has said, “The total commitment total commitment of ourselves to Christ is based on the totality of his mercy to us.”  Hearts given to Jesus and all the implications – from putting weights back in their assigned placed to tasting bread and juice and seeing that the Lord is good together.  May this be our experience of God in 2023, and may this be true for all of us. Amen

What would make Christmas good?  What would make Advent good?  How might we be able to look back on Advent 2023 and say “It was good, thank you Lord.”

“Wake up!”  We have heard.  “Stay awake!  Stay alert!”  Be ready!  “Make a straight path!”  “Make a clear highway,” we have heard.  Today we hear “Rejoice!”  We sang it too.  When we speak about joy in the Christian faith, we are not speaking of mere happiness; particularly happiness that depends on circumstances.  I think for many, the problem with hearing Christmas songs in the malls and the stores and the Christmas specials is not so much the repetition or debates on what date they should begin, but the kind of inherent cheer in them.  In “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, before the dancing, and the reading of Luke 2 and the transformed tree, there is Charlie Brown and Linus talking at a wall.  Charles Schulz did not shy away from existential angst.  Charlie Brown says “Christmas is coming.  I’m not happy.  I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”  We get it. The feeling that there is potentially something wrong with us as we hear about silver bells and children laughing and people passing meeting smile after smil and it’s the most wonderful time of the year and sleigh rides and reindeer and run run Rudolph and obligatory jollity. 

Who has time for that?  We are taking the time though, right now, to consider something more profound; to consider joy not as something that we have to find or that can be taken from us depending on what is going on in our lives.  Lucinda Williams is a singer/songwriter that I like very much.  She has a song called “Joy” about unrequited love (many of her songs are about love that is unrequited or has gone bad).  She sings “I don’t want you anymore/You took my joy/You took my joy/I want it back” and goes on to name a list of towns in which she plans to look for her joy.  We’re not talking about joy in those terms when we talk about joy in the Christian faith.  We are talking about and holding onto joy as a gift from God.  We are talking about joy that is independent of any circumstance in which we find ourselves.

Aside – When we speak of joy we’re not talking about grinning and bearing it or facing every circumstance with cheer.  As followers of Christ we are saddened.  Life can be hard and it can often be unfair.  Sometimes we might even weep.  We mourn.   I attended a funeral once of a sister in the faith’s mother and there was no mention at all of sadness or mourning.  It felt wrong and I would never do that.  The thing about mourning as people of hope is, mourning/sadness/tears do not have the last word (as we heard in our Psalm).  We remember that the joy candle is burning right alongside the candle of hope and we remember how the story ends (which is not really an end at all but a renewal).  End of aside.

Joy not only has the last word but it should have the first word for us.  “Rejoice always” writes Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:16.  The word for rejoice here in Greek was used as a greeting.  Chairete.  Chaire chairete meant “Welcome, good day, I am glad to see you.”  They went a bit further than hello and that’s a good thing I think.  The first word was joyful acknowledgement, and we well every day to begin with joyful acknowledgement.  Of what or whom?  Of Christ.  Last week we sat for a while with “He is our peace.”  We kept that truth in front of us.  Let’s do the same now.

He is our joy.

In Christ, we’re talking about and living out a whole new way of being in the world.  A whole new way of living.  Why?  Because He has saved us, he is saving us, he will save us.  He has rescued us.  He has delivered us. He has freed us.  He has released us.  We long for a new way of living and a new way of being in which we may rejoice; in which we may have joy regardless of our circumstances.  We are found in such joy when we are found in the deliverance of Jesus. 

He is our joy.  Let us not become used to deliverance.  Let us not get blasé about it, take it for granted or ignore it altogether/leave it unacknowledged.  We sing a song here called “Your Mercy.”  The chorus goes “I stand before my king/And I bow my heart to sing/You saved me/You raised me/You died so I could live/No greater love than this/Your mercy”  I love those lines.  So simple yet so incredibly profound.  “You saved me.”  There’s another song that is a prayer that goes “Restore to me the joy of your salvation.”  This is a good prayer – may it be on our hearts.  We want to have a good Advent!  Listen again to the words of the Psalm we heard – “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like people who dream.”  This is a song about those who had been brought back to Jerusalem and the surrounding area after being carried away in captivity to Babylon.  They had been delivered.  They had been saved.  This is what God does. “When the Lord brought back those who returned to Zion, we were like people who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy, then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’  The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.”  We were like people who dream.  I wonder if you remember your dreams.  I dream vividly and I remember my dreams almost every night.  I take after my father in this.  Immigrating from Ireland as my family did, my father had occasion to be reunited with people whom he had not seen in many years – decades even.  I heard him say on more than one occasion, upon being seeing the person whom he had not seen in decades, “It was like a dream.”  I know what he meant.  Something so good and so unlikely you wonder if it’s even real.  Pinch me, am I dreaming?  When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like people who dream.  Joyous wonder at being delivered.  May God restore such joyous wonder to all of us.  We remember Mary going to visit her cousin Elizabeth and Elizabeth exclaiming with a loud cry in joyful wonder, “And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?”  Let us exclaim in joyful wonder, “And why has this happened to me, that my Lord has come to me?”

Let us begin with joyful acknowledgement that in God there is comfort.  In God there is restoration.  In God there is building up even in the middle of devastation.  Circumstances in life can be hard.  Life was hard for those who had come back to Jerusalem.  They had returned to ruins.  Things were not as they once were.  The rich preyed on the poor.  In the middle of this situation comes the promises – good news to the oppressed, binding up for the brokenhearted, liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners. 

The promise of a new set of clothes.  Mourning does not have the last word with God.  Look at v3.  “… to provide for those who mourn in Zion – to give them a garland instead of ashes (a wreath of leaves or flowers worn on the head rather than ashes of mourning), the oil of gladness (good for your skin and hair) instead of morning, the mantle of praise (mantle like a cloak or overcoat or parka) instead of a faint spirit.”  New clothes.

Someone might say “This all sounds very nice but new clothes don’t really do anything.  For that matter, decorations don’t really do anything to change anything do they?”  What is the point of a voice calling in the wilderness if there’s no one to hear?  Aren’t we just shouting into the wind with all this stuff? We’re shouting alright, and let us keep shouting.  I wouldn’t say we’re shouting into the wind, but perhaps we’re shouting into the darkness.  Let us shout and let us light candles in the darkness in holy defiance – the candles of hope, peace and joy now burning, waiting for the Christ candle in the middle of them all.  Someone has put it like this:  “…shouting in the darkness is a noble profession. It is a calling. When we shout, when we decorate our homes and our churches, we are not saying that we are unaware of difficulties, that we are oblivious to bad news. We are saying that we choose to live by good news. We are saying that we choose to live by hope and not despair.”

The prophet picks up this clothing imagery again at the end of our passage, speaking of rejoicing as a choice; rejoicing as an acknowledgement of deliverance: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.” Then this promise and the imagery switches from clothes to plants, “For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all nations.”  Don’t despise the words of the prophets said Paul, and we won’t.  We rejoice in hope of the one who has arrived, has arrived, and will arrive.  We trust in the One who’s promises are sure as the buds that will appear in spring, no matter how unlikely that looks now.  I know that evergreens get a lot of attention at this time of year, and they have their own significance, but let’s not forget the deciduous trees.  Maple, oak, my favourite birch.  They look bare now but there are winter buds on their branches.  This is from northerwoodlands.org – “These buds formed last summer and are designed to withstand snow, ice, and subzero temperatures. By withdrawing water from them before winter, deciduous trees protect their buds from frost damage.  If you slice open a bud and use a magnifier, you can see tiny green leaves and flowers folded up inside.”  In other words, signs of new life are all around us, even in the winter (of our discontent or otherwise).  May God give us eyes to see them.   

Joy in our faith is more than a feeling.  It is an action.  We joyfully acknowledge the one who brings deliverance and who has given us a new set of clothes.  We also remember how Jesus described his mission on the day he returned to his hometown (not Bethlehem but the town in which he was raised).  In the synagogue in Nazareth Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah and the gathering heard him say, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” (Luke 4:18-19).  When he finished he said to them “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21)

Our joy in Christ, our rejoicing in Christ, is not just for us and our benefit.  Last week we talked about being the embracing arms of Christ.  People of tender hearts and humanity in Christ.  This is Christ’s work.  We share the Holy Spirit of Christ.  We are called to be living letters of Christ, ambassadors of Christ.  Bringing and being good news, release, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, binding up wounds, bringing comfort and consoling as we have been consoled.  

So let us go from here with this question before us.  To whom are we being called to be the joy of Christ?  As we acknowledge and rejoice together in the wonder of our deliverance, to whom are we being called to bring good news of great joy which is for all people.  The joy of the Lord is our strength, after all.  Let us be people who hold onto that joy fiercely, and together.  May this be true for all of us this Advent season. 

I heard someone say recently, “I’m stressed out from watching too much news.”  We get it.  We hear the headlines. 

UN commission to investigate Hamas sexual violence, appeal for evidence    Situation in Southern Gaza ‘Worse by the hour’ WHO Official Says   Yemen’s Houthi Rebels Claim Attacks On Ships in the Red Sea   A Venezuelan vote on an oil-rich region of Guyana raises concerns of a South American military conflict  As its counteroffensive fizzles, Ukraine battles itself, Russia and a shift in the world’s attention.

The news stresses me out.  We can be happy that the escaped kangaroo was found, at least!  Even in the midst of that news, concerns are raised about the care and welfare of animals in unregulated zoos.   Is there any good news for us?

Is there any good news for us?  The question of peace may be a personal one.  Where is our peace in the midst of uncertainty, struggle, and suffering?  Who is our peace?  For some years I’ve been “on call” at the Behavioural Disorders Centre at Sunnybrook.  They have an inpatient program for those with OCD.   OCD can manifest itself in a condition called “religious scrupulosity,” in which your faith and OCD become entangled with unfavourable results.  They call me when they have a patient for whom they think it would be helpful to speak with a clergyperson.  The first time I ever went, the patient said to me, “I have no peace.”  My heart broke for them. 

Where is peace to be found?  In armed conflict?  In distracting ourselves?  In numbing ourselves in any one of the numerous ways in which we may numb ourselves?  In buying our way out of our situation?  What is peace anyway?  Is it simply the absence of conflict, or is it flourishing for all?  Is it right relationships with God, with one another, and with all of creation?

“Keep alert,” said Jesus.  “Stay awake,” said Jesus.  Here we are and we are longing to hear a word from God that we don’t hear anywhere else.  Here we are with the peace candle burning defiantly alongside the hope candle.  Peace is often associated with quiet, so let us take some time to quietly take these words in.

“For he is our peace….” (Eph 2:14)

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you to.  I do not give as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)

Listen to these words from God this day.  Things are in disarray.  Isaiah 40 to 55 addresses a people in exile.  A people who had been displaced.  The people of Jerusalem carried away in captivity.  Things are far from peaceful.  The scene that we read in Isaiah 40 is known as a heavenly council scene.  There’s a kind of heavenly meeting going on of which the prophet has a vision.  God.  Seraphim.  Churubim.  Angels.  Archangels.  God speaks.  “Comfort, O comfort my people.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid.” 

I want us to note something here about how these verses describe the tender heart of God.  Comfort, O comfort my people.  Speak tenderly.  How much do we long for God’s embrace?  Listen to the description of God in v 11.  “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.”  This is a place of peace.  Being in the arms of God is being a place of peace.  There’s a hymn about this that goes, “There is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God.”  There is a place of quiet rest, safe in the arms of God.

As we are thinking of peace and being people of peace, I would like us to consider.  To whom are we being called to be the arms of God?  We often talk about being the hands and feet of Christ.  In light of this language in Isaiah 40, where are we called to be the embracing arms of Jesus?  In the prophet Jeremiah, we hear this message to a people who are living in exile.  “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile; pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”  Seek the good.  Do not let us get cynical about tender-heartedness or reduce this language to cliché.  I read something from Toni Morrison lately in which she wrote, “No more apologies for a bleeding heart when the opposite is no heart at all.  Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more humanity.”  Where are we called to be the arms of Christ?

The meeting goes on.  A voice is heard crying out, “In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”  “The uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.”  A way back to Jerusalem will be made.  A way back to God will be made.  What kind of difference did a good road make 2500 years ago?  It’s hard for us to imagine in our age of highways and superhighways.  Given the season, we might say something like, “Every bit of snow will be ploughed, every piece of highway salted, the snow-filled places will be made bare with no icy patches.”  “Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”   Prepare our hearts for the way of the Lord to be made in us, which is the way of peace.  Let there be peace on earth, and let It begin with me – seriously.

It’s hard to say in the midst of all those headlines I read earlier and in the midst of the lack of peace that is felt within.  We’re not good at this peace thing!  A voice says, “Cry out!” and I said “What shall I cry?  All people are grass, their constancy is like the flowers of the field.”  We are not constant.  We are not faithful to God.  We are not faithful to one another.  We are not faithful to God’s creation.  The answer comes, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”

The word that says, if we’re listening, “He is our peace.”  The word that says, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled or let them be afraid.”

Here is your God!  It’s not all about peace and quiet.  Peace is not simply personal or individual.  “Get you up to a high mountain,” comes the word.  Shout it from the rooftops.  Make our Prince of Peace known in our words and in our actions.  Lift up your voice with strength.  Lift up your voice with strength.  Lift it up, and do not fear.  Say, “Here is your God.”

He’s here.  He’s with us. He’s coming.  Prepare the way, God helping us. 

Into a situation in which there were varying opinions about what or who would bring peace comes John the Baptist.  Mark begins his story of good news with good news and reminds us who the story is about.  This is not a story in which we reign supreme.  This is not a story in which we are left to our own devices.  “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  The Prince of Peace.  Cousin John was a man who knew his role (and, by extension, our role) – point to the One who is greater.  He comes striding through the desert dressed like an Old Testament prophet in a camel-skin suit.  He came eating locusts and honey, symbolizing judgement against oppression and the promise of a new land.  His style of dress and diet spoke of the kind of life to which he called people, so let us hear the call.  His style of dress and diet speak and show of a life focussed on and founded in God.  Someone has described John the Baptist like this: “He is…about turning things upside down… John is confident that the One who is coming will offer true peace. A peace that transforms, equips and unites. A just peace that lifts up those who have been pressed down gathers in those who have been ignored and strengthens those who have been made weak. We are called to move beyond individualistic thinking. The comfort proclaimed in Isaiah and echoed by John in the Gospel of Mark is not my comfort or your comfort, but it is our comfort. We are called to think beyond the “I” into the “we,” from the “me” to the “us.” That’s the Advent call, the invitation to invite God to inhabit our world by working together to open the roads, remove the barriers and fill in the pits so that we can see God coming and rush to worship together.

He is your peace.  We are invited to step into His peace in a whole new way this Advent season.  We talked about Christmas as a time of commemoration.  Immanuel.  God is with us.  God’s kingdom comes.  Advent is a season of waiting and looking forward to the kingdom that is coming.  Listen to these words from Isaiah 9:

 ⁶ For a child has been born for us,    a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders;     and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,     Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. ⁷ His authority shall grow continually,     and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom.     He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onwards, and for evermore, The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

The verse we heard from “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” is not the end of the song; no more than an absence of peace is the end of the story.  The bells still ring out, cutting through the tumult and turmoil of conflict.  The next verse goes like this, “Then rang the bells more loud and deep/ God is not dead nor doth He sleep/ The wrong shall fail, the right prevail/ With peace on earth, goodwill to men.”    May we all welcome the peace of Christ this season.  Amen.

Are you ready for Christmas?  Are you ready for Advent?  What does this mean for the follower of Christ?  What’s the difference between the two?  I came across this definition from Dr. Lester Ruth, a historian of Christian worship at Duke Divinity School – “The simplest way I have to distinguish between Advent and Christmas is that Advent uses the word 'come' as a longing petition, expressed in anticipation, whereas Christmas is a commemorative reflection on how the Lord has come in Christ's birth and thus the trigger for a new redemptive order has begun.” 

We are reminded quite pointedly in seasons like Advent that we, as followers of Christ, are a people who wait.  We are a people who are called to wait actively and alertly.  We are a people who are called to wait watchfully.  A people who remain awake.  A people who wait in hope.  Let’s ask God for help as we prepare to listen to God’s word for us today. “Our Shocking Hope” is the name of today’s sermon.  If you’ve been spending time with us here at Blythwood, you know that talk of hope and songs about hope and prayer about hope is not new or surprising.  At least, I hope it’s not surprising!  We lit the candle of hope today, and I like that the hope candle burns on its own.  There’s something defiant about it burning there on its own.  There is something defiant about our hope in a world that seems so completely and utterly devoid of hope – whether we are talking about geopolitics, economics, personal situations, relationships.  I hardly have to explain what those are.  We know what they are if we’re paying attention to the world and if we’re paying attention to ourselves and those around us.  How are we to live in hope rather than despair?  How are we to choose hope rather than despair? We turn to Isaiah 64.  We call out.  We cry out.  Even in the middle of seeming indifference on God’s part, inaction on God’s part, inattention on God’s part.  If those words shock us I think that’s good.  We may need to be shocked, and I think we can handle naming how doubt might manifest itself.  Even in the middle of our doubt, we cry out.  “Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…”  In the previous chapter, the cry had been “Look down from heaven and see…”   The terms have been elevated.  The people of Judah (some of them anyway) had returned.  The place was in ruins.  The temple a desolation.  Injustice ruled the day.  The rich preyed on the poor.  Worship of God had become meaningless or God was ignored altogether (hyperbolically speaking because obviously someone is calling out to God).  “We have all become like one who is unclean and all out righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.”  “There is no one who calls on your name or attempts to take hold of you, for you have hidden your face from us…”

The cry is “Come, Lord.”  “Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down so that the mountains would quake at your presence…”  We sing it.  “O Come O Come Emmanuel.”  The name of the other song.  Jesus taught us to pray it.  “Your Kingdom come.”  Paul ended his first letter to Corinth with it.  Maranatha.  “Come, Lord,” or “The Lord has come!”  This was an ancient Christian greeting, maybe we should bring it back in some way (“The Lord has come!  Come Lord Jesus!)  The Bible ends with such prayer.  “Amen, come Lord Jesus.”

As we prayer that prayer, “Amen, come Lord Jesus,” we remember.  We remember what God has done to save His people.  When we remember, we are not so much reminding God as reminding ourselves.  When we remember, we’re not simply talking about bringing something to our minds, we are talking about a choice we make and a practice that we carry out – a practice that is nurtured in our worship together.  Listen to the words of the prophet – “When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.” (64:3)  God’s word came to a people he had called to himself from a mountain wreathed in fire and smoke.  God had delivered his people from subjugation with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.  God made a way through the sea where there was no way.  “From ages past no one has heard, no ear perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you…”  (64:4)  The prophet then makes things very personal as he calls out to God “…who works for those who wait for him.” (64:4b) He declares “You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in their ways.”   (64:5)

God you have worked good for us.  God you have met us.  How have you seen those truths in your own life?  I want us to take some moments to reflect.  How has God worked wonders in your life?  Awesome deeds that you did not expect.  Something that is beyond anything you could have imagined.   Something that you know did not come from you – it could only have come from God. 

How has God enabled grace in your life?  How has God enabled compassion or justice in your life?  I’m going to invite us all to reflect and share if you like.  Hit pause.  Share with us, share with someone.

My own answer here.  God has enabled forgiveness in me that did not come from me.  God has worked reconciled relationships in my life that are nothing short of miraculous.  Say something here about the assurance which the one who calls on God has here.  You are our Father.  You are the Potter.

“Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…”  Two thousand and five hundred years or so after these words were written down, they take on a new meaning, don’t they?  We remember and celebrate when the heavens opened, and an angel choir was heard by a group of shepherds.  Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those on whom his favour rests.  We commemorate Christ’s coming, but that’s not all we have to be ready for.  As we celebrate hope in Christ this morning we bring to mind and bring to our worship our wondrous hope.   “Keep alert,” says Jesus.  “Keep awake.”  “And what I say to you I say to all,” says Jesus, “Keep awake.”

Jesus is talking about the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.  I do.  Do not be frightened by the imagery in this passage.  It doesn’t reflect a threat from God but a promise of good.  Jesus and his followers are in Jerusalem before the events which will take place in Jerusalem.  Jesus has told his followers that the Temple will be destroyed.  They ask him when this will happen and what will be a sign.  Jesus take the opportunity to talk about the end of the Temple and the end of the world as we know it.  The first event happened in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem.  The second event is what we await and we don’t know when it’s coming, nor are we supposed to.  Things will be hard.  Wars and rumours of wars.  Earthquakes.  Famine.  Family fighting against family.  False messiahs.  False prophets with pointing to signs and omens to lead you astray.  Persecution.

Take heart, dear sister, fear not, dear brother, as we sing.  The Holy Spirit will help you.  The call from Jesus is for us to endure.  To hold fast.  We need language to shake us up.  The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light.   This is not a threat but a wonderful promise.  The precursor to the Son of Man coming in clouds, with great power and glory.  The precursor to the vision of the city that we come back to time and time again; the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  The renewal of all things.  Every tear wiped from every eye.  Death no more.  Mourning and crying and pain no more. No temple in the city because the temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.  No need of sun or moon to shine on the city, because the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the lamb.  The nations walking by its light.  The gates never shut.   

When?  It is not for us to know, but we are called to pray “Come Lord Jesus” and we are called to wait in hope.  Someone has described our hope like this: “…at the same time, we hear the promise that the master is near. Not as a threat, but as a promise. We are not alone. What we see in front of us is not all that there is. History is heading somewhere. We may not know where exactly, except that it is someplace called the Kingdom of Heaven. Or as Jesus was fond of describing it, it is Life. And that is what we long for in the end, life. Life in all its fullness and meaning, life in all its joy and promise. That’s what is coming; that is what is promised.”

Our hope is active.  “Keep alert,” said Jesus.  “Keep awake,” said Jesus.  “What I say, I say to you all: keep away.”  Keep the truths of hope, peace, joy and love in Christ in front of us.  Keep the truths of the Kingdom of God, which has come and which is coming in its fulness, in front of us.  Keep the hallmarks of the new creation – hope, peace, joy, love – in front of us every day.  Every day.  There are two Advent devotional readings we are making you aware of.  Sit with one daily (or both even).  Be part of a worshipping community (this one or another one) that is waiting together in expectant hope.  Listen to how Paul echoes Jesus’ words at the end of his letter to the people of Corinth: “Keep alert, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong.  Let all that you do be done in love.” (1 Cor 16:13-14)

May this season of Advent find us in a state of readiness or renewed readiness for our King who has come, and who is coming.  Let us signal our intention to be wakeful, watchful, and hopeful as we come around the Lord’s table in love.     

Amen

You may or may not know I’m a big Elvis fan.  The King of Rock and Roll.  One night at a show, Elvis saw a sign calling him “The King.”  He stopped for a few moments and told the audience that there’s only King, and that’s Christ.  This is Christ the King Sunday.    Psalm 24 is all about God’s kingship.  What does it mean to call God King?  What should it look like for those who call Jesus Lord?  What does it mean for the King of Glory to enter in?  Let us look at this 24^th Psalm and see what God may have to say to our hearts.

We’re about to once again enter into the season of Advent.  We’re about to once again remember and celebrate hope, peace, joy and love in Christ.  This morning’s psalm speaks to the foundation of our hope, peace, joy and love.  God is King.  Rejoice the Lord is King, as we sang earlier.  We need to return to this kind of truth time and time again.  We need to keep it in front of us, as I like to say, in a world in which so much is uncertain.  In a world in which so much seems to be shaken.  Quite literally as we see and hear about wars and rumours of wars.  The earth literally shaken by machines of war, weapons of war.  Families torn apart by violence and loss.  Personally speaking, we may be facing uncertainly when it comes to our health, finances, job, vocation, relationships.   In a world where so much is uncertain, how much do we have to return to those things of which we can be certain?

Certainty

This is how the psalmist starts, and the Psalm starts with a sort of global view.  “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,”   Everything has been made by God.  No matter how you interpret the creation story in terms of timelines, this is something upon which all followers of Christ agree.  God made everything.  Take a walk outside, and every single thing you look at is God’s creation.  Not only did God make it, but God upholds it – God keeps everything going.  All that is in the world includes people – “and those who live in it.” 

If we stopped to think about this meaningfully and often, do you think it would make a difference in how we saw things?  Do you think it would make a difference in how we viewed nature and natural resources?  Would we consider the primary owners of natural resources to be nation-states?  Corporations?  Individuals?  Would we think in terms of ownership at all, or would we think of stewardship?  This is a word we use often in the church but what does it mean to be steward?  Stewards are given responsibility to look after things that belong to another.  Would it make a difference in how we viewed our own role as stewards of creation?   To believe that God made all things and called them good?  That in Christ, God maintains and sustains all things and that in Christ, all things hold together? 

It’s a foundational part of our worldview – of how we, as followers of Christ, view the world.  Like any belief, it’s not meant to exist in a vacuum.  We remembered our dear brother/father/uncle in the faith Jim Kemp last week here at Blythwood.  We heard about how matters of faith are not simply theory or speculation but are meant to be lived out.  It’s a significant thing to say and to believe and trust “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it… and all who live in it.”   Such a belief and trust affect how we view things and the actions that we take. 

“For he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers.” (24:2)  There is an OT image of God as creator in which God is seen as the subduer of chaos.  The earth is described as formless and empty with darkness covering the face of the waters in Gen 1:2.  To the ancient Israelite, the sea was thought to be a place of chaos and danger.  For the follower of Christ, In naming God as creator and founder of the earth and all who are in it, we are asserting that it is in Christ that order and a firm foundation is to be found.  We are asserting that is in God well-ordered existence is to be found.  We are asserting that it is in God the Father and Christ the Son and the Holy Spirit that peace is to be found.

You might be saying, “I’m with you so far, but what does this mean in terms of how we’re supposed to live our lives?  Particularly in all the uncertainty and chaos that seems to rule these days.”  Faith doesn’t indeed exist in a vacuum.  What does it mean to our lives?  What should our lives look like if we believe that God is King and that Jesus is Lord, and it’s not simply something we put on our cars or our t-shirts or walls or wherever we proclaim this? 

Seek God’s Presence

Seek his presence.  Seek God’s presence.  God is the ultimate seeker, it’s true.  He’s always pursuing us like the “Hound of Heaven” in Francis Thompson’s poem.  Stop running.  Stop moving.  Seek his presence.  Seek his face.  Listen to your heart.  Listen to these lyrics.  “Come,” my heart says, “seek his face”.  Your face, Lord do I seek. (Ps 27:8)  Make that your prayer.  “Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord?  And who shall stand in his holy place?” (24:3)  The psalmist is singing of the Temple of Jerusalem.  The place where God was present.  The place where God is present is holy.  What does it mean that God is holy?  Here’s how someone has described God’s holiness.   God’s holiness is “all that contrasts with and transcends the human, the marvellous, the mysterious, the incomprehensible.  In holiness, the Lord is incomparable.”  Who could stand in such a place?

“Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to another, and do not swear deceitfully.” (24:4)  Easy, right?  Who can say this?  Anyone meet this list of qualifications?  Of course, we don’t.  It’s a bit of a trick question because this is not a list of qualifications that you must fulfill before you seek and know God’s presence.  The only qualification you need to seek and know God’s presence is a knowledge of your need for Him.  The only qualification you need to seek and to know God’s presence is to acknowledge that the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it and those who live in it and that we need him and that in him is life and light.   We don’t come before God based on any righteousness of our own.  We don’t come before God based on any cleverness or intelligence or resourcefulness or strength or beauty of our own.  Calling on Jesus as Lord and Christ as King means recognizing our need to be made into someone new.  It means recognizing that this doesn’t happen without God.  It means seeking and knowing God’s presence in order that we might be made righteous – made right, made whole, made well.  One writer puts it like this – “The righteous one seeks the righteousness of God by seeking God’s own presence in the midst of the worshipping community.”

So what’s the answer to “Who could do this?” or “Who is sufficient for these things?” (II Cor 2:16)  The one who seeks God’s face and cries out, “Have mercy on me, a sinner!”  That’s our only qualification.  It doesn’t mean that we wallow in our sin.  It doesn’t mean that God’s grace is simply an excuse to intentionally miss the mark or come up short.  This song reminds the worshipper that making us clean, purifying our hearts, keeping us from lifting up our souls to false gods or swearing deceitfully by God (making a show of worship as an outward sign and not meaning any of it – going to church each Sunday with a Bible tucked under our arm and bowing down to the gods of nationalism or consumerism or cupidity or greed or envy or self-sufficiency or any of the gods that we bow down to) – this is what God does.  God changes us when we seek His face.  This is the promise.  “They will receive blessing from the LORD, and vindication from the God of their salvation.” (24:5)

This is what it means to seek the presence of our King friends.  God is making us right when we seek his presence.  How’s that seeking going for you?  I’ve known it to be going really well.  I’ve known it to be going really badly.  I’d like to talk about that with you anytime.  So would our church leaders here, any of our deacons.  We seek his face together, of course.  We’re not playing.  This is not something you play with, the presence of God.  The promise is right there.  They will receive blessings from the Lord – the blessing of being made right, of being made anew.  Don’t we need that?  One writer talks about God’s purposes for us being worked out as we seek his face.  When it comes to clean hands and pure hearts and not lifting up our souls to another and not swearing deceitfully – “It is not a text for some sort of judicial procedure to exclude the unqualified; rather, it is the rehearsal of a purpose and a possibility.  This kind of person…is what the Presence intends.  This Presence, says the psalm, is the power that makes this kind of person possible.  The Presence calls and commands, judges and redeems. To be in the Place of the Presence means to be at the point where the purpose and power of God come to bear on a person’s identity and formation.” 

Do you want that?  We serve a King who is holy.  What does this look like?  There’s a wonderful description in Psalm 89 – “The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours… You have a mighty arm; strong is your hand, high is your right hand.  Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne; steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.” (Ps 89:11a, 13-14)  Do you want to serve this God?  Do you want to follow this God?  Do you want to seek God’s face?  Let us seek His face together because such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.

Lift Up Your Heads

The Psalm ends with worship.  “Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the king of glory may come in!” (24:7)  It was thought that this psalm was sung when the Ark of the Covenant was brought to the temple.  This title for God, “the king of glory,” was associated with the Ark, which was the visible sign of God’s presence among his people.  You can imagine a group of people returning after a battle, coming to the city gate.  The watchers there have their heads bowed – tension on their faces.  They wonder how things turned out.  The cry is heard, “Lift up your heads, O gates!” not directed at the gates but at the people there.  “Be lifted up, O ancient doors that the King of glory may come in.”

In other words, dear friends, the battle has been won!

Who is this King of Glory?  Good question.  The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.  What does he look like?  A little baby crying out in the night.  A man stretched out on a cross.  The Spirit who was sent and is sent to his followers to literally inspire us – to give us life.  This is the King of Glory!  Lift up your heads and welcome him.  This is the invitation.  Lift up your heads and welcome him so that we may be lifted up – that we may be transformed into his image.  That we may be made righteous, made right, made whole.  Lift up your heads O gates! 

There’s a great paradox in this, of course.  The ancient Israelites were aware of one too.  How could the creator and sustainer of all things also live in a temple?  What temple could contain him?  It’s the same thing for us.  Of course, something has changed.  We’re the temple.  We’re the dwelling place of this King.  Do we take that seriously?  We need to take that seriously if we’re going to profess Christ as King.  We need reminding of this of course we do.  The church in Corinth did.  Paul wrote to them, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?  For you were bought with a price; therefore, glorify God in your body.”  Therefore seek God’s face so that God’s ways - love, mercy, grace, justice – may be known in and through you.

God’s transcendence and God’s immanence.  The creator and sustainer of the universe living within us.  I can’t explain it.  I don’t think we have to.  There’s nothing wrong with a little paradox.  Two things that seem opposite are held together in the wonder of God. We wouldn’t want to follow a god we could fit into some non-paradoxical box, would we?  Maybe we would.  Some do, I suppose.  This is not the King we serve through friends.  The King we serve is the creator and sustainer of all who makes his home within us if we but lift up our heads and cry out, “Have mercy on me, change me, make me like you to show your glory.”

Back to Elvis

I pray that my knowledge of my need for the grace of God grows every day, and that God’s grace is worked through me every day.  Elvis was by no means perfect.  He did know his need for God’s grace.  Elvis became Instrumental in the creation of something new – rock and roll.  He became known as its king.  He knew there was a greater King.  One who is also about creation and transformation.  One who is all about making something new.  He makes something new of us.  One day we’ll hear him say, “Look, I am making all things new.”  

This is the King that we serve, my friends.

Amen

We’ve been talking about questions like “In what or whom do you hope?”  Do you hope in anything at all?  In what or whom do you place your faith?  How do you define a good life?  What makes a life good?  What makes a person good?  How can I be a better person?  What might make our world better?  Do we ever consider these things?

Do we ever consider praise?  We’re considering praise today.  To praise.  To honour.  To laud (which simply means to praise publicly).  A song of my youth went, “We’ve come a long, long way together/Through the hard times and the good/I have to celebrate you…/I have to praise you like I should.”

So what or who is worthy of our praise?  If our answer is God, how is our praise going?  What can we learn from the 145^th Psalm, and how might it affect our practice of praise to God?  Let’s come before God in prayer and ask for help as we listen to God’s word for us.

When it comes to matters of prayer and praise, we do well to look to the Psalms.  The prayer that I just prayed is from the 19^th Psalm.  One hundred and fifty songs that made up Israel’s song/prayer book as well as Jesus’ song/prayer book.   We do well to turn to them when it comes to prayer and song.  We do well to turn to them when it comes to praise.  We talked last week about living doxologically.  Living in such a way that our praise and, honour, and adoration of God spills out in our lives.  Any answer that we make to the question “How then should we live?” in our words and actions needs to be grounded in our praise of God.

Praise

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.  We are not just here to talk about praise but to practice it together.  I invite you to sing along with us as we praise God in a most traditional way. (Sing “The Doxology”)  “Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever.” (145:2). The concept of praise is contained in the very word for Psalm in Hebrew.  It’s Tehillim.  It means praises.  We’re looking at Psalm 145 this morning, which kicks off six Psalms of praise that end the Psalms.  It’s the only Psalm that’s introduced as Tehillim – Praise. Of David, as it says in our NRSV Bibles.  The Talmud had this to say about this Psalm – “Everyone who repeats the Tehillah of David thrice a day may be sure that he is a child of the world to come.”

Being in the Psalms changes us.  I would expand that statement out to include every Psalm in all of the variety – whether they be prayers of thanksgiving or confidence or praise or lament.  Being in them, repeating them, and singing them will change us.  In the first few hundred years of the church, some early saints wrote of the sin of acedia.  It’s a Greek word that literally means without care or concern.  Later it became “sloth” (with no disrespect to sloths).  It goes beyond laziness, though.  It describes a spiritual apathy or listlessness, spiritual inertia, a resistance to prayer, devotional practices, worship together.  Someone has said In practical terms, this looks like indifference, boredom, avoidance of responsibility, self-indulgence, or sluggishness. It feels like discouragement, being unfocused, withdrawn, jaded, hopeless, irritated, and worthless.”  Acedia can manifest itself in laziness or in constant frenetic activity that keeps us distracted.  We want to take this Christ following life seriously.  Acedia is something that we need to be on our guard against together.  It’s been said that the cure for acedia is prayer and psalmody.  Singing the Psalms, praying the Psalms.  It has an effect on a person.  It does a body good, as they say about milk. It just does.

Sing praise, sing praise.  V1 “I will extol you, my God and King.”  Look at what the Psalmist is saying here.  I will extol you.  I will exalt you.  I will lift you up.  You are worthy, O Lord, to be lifted up above everything.  This leads us to the question - Why should we praise God?  You may hear people say things like, “God must be very needy if God wants us to be praising him all the time.”  Let us not be foolish about this.  Here’s the thing.  God is in all and through all and above all, and it is fitting and right and good and proper for us to offer him our praise.  Every day.  Forever.  Every day, I will bless you.  What does it mean for us to bless God?  It means to praise.  It means to tell of who God is – not because God is needy but because God is our delight.  Knowing God through the person of his Son and in the power of His Spirit is our delight.  This delight needs to be expressed.   As C.S. Lewis put it, “Our delight is incomplete until it is expressed…  It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with.”  We get this.  We like to share things that delight us.  Our delight needs to be expressed to be made complete, and our delight in God is made complete in its expression.

Choose  So, do we choose to do this?  The Psalmist does.  The Psalmist affirms the desire to communicate his delight.  Every day. V2 “Every day I will bless you, and praise your name forever and ever.”  I’m talking a lot about songs and singing here, but our praise of God doesn’t need to be sung.  It can be spoken.  We can pause at the beginning and end of our day.  We can pause in the middle of our day and say, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”  There’s a personal aspect to praising God.  A personal aspect to acknowledging that God is above all.  Why?  Because Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, his greatness is unsearchable.  It’s so unsearchable we can’t even express it.  We use images.  We sing things like “Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds, your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgements are like the great deep.” His greatness is unsearchable – inexpressible.   But the Psalmist does his best to express it, as do we.  I’ve always loved the line in Charles Wesley’s “And Can It Be That I Should Gain” – In vain, the first-born seraph tries to sound the depths of love divine.  I think there’s a significance to our trying, no matter how meagre it may seem.  I think that God shares our delight.

Share

Because praise is meant to be shared.  We see this in the next section.  There’s an individual aspect to praise.  An individual decision to respond to who God is and what God has done is doing and will do.  There’s also a corporate aspect to praise. V4 “One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.”  There’s an evangelical aspect to praise – a telling of the good news of Christ.  There is a declaration or a proclamation of God’s mighty acts in praise.  There is an invitation towards others to join in.  “Come let us worship and bow down,” as Psalm 95 famously goes.  Let us praise God together.  Both individual and corporate aspects are shown here – V5b-7: “On your wondrous words I will meditate.  I will declare your greatness.  They shall celebrate the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.”

Our praise of God is not only to delight in God’s greatness but to delight and make known his goodness.  God is good.  It can become a bit of a slogan or a bumper sticker-type thing.  May it never lose its meaning, no matter our circumstances.  May it ever more come to have a deeper meaning for us friends, no matter our circumstances.  What would it mean for us to believe that God is good?  How would we want to reflect God’s goodness?  In praising God, we leave ourselves open to being changed by the one we’re praising.  In meditating on God’s wondrous works.  The Psalmist goes back to Exodus 34 for his declaration about God in the second section.  V8: “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”  Abounding in hesed.  In compassion.  V9: “The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.”  What would it mean for us to believe that?  For us to take hold of that in the depths of our being?  How would it cause us to see people?  How would it cause us to see creation? 

All

Creation is involved in this, too.  We’ve talked about praising God individually.  Praising God together.  Things then expand ever further out.  V11 “All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord.”  If these were silent, even the rocks would cry out, as someone once said.  In praising God, we’re joining in with something that all creation will do one day.  We get glimpses of it now, too, don’t we?  Creation speaking of the glory of God’s kingdom.  They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom. V13: “Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations.”  This thing we’re part of is enduring!  We get the idea of this enduring kingdom by singing and reciting the Psalms, don’t we?  Not long ago, I was singing Psalm 23, known as a Psalm of David.  Of course, it had stuck with me before that here was a guy named David singing a Psalm of David on a stringed instrument.  It struck me in a new way through this day.  Thinking about singing the same words some 3,000 years later.  Thinking about what they meant to the king, thinking about what they mean for me, for us.  That connection to the past we have.  Of course, our praising anticipates the future, too, speaking of enduring.  Praising God is joining in with that chorus that we hear about all over the book of Revelation.  Their delight is in sharing who God is, too.  The Lord who is faithful in all his words and gracious in all his deeds.

What does God’s greatness and goodness look like?  This unsearchable, indescribable greatness and goodness that go together?  There’s a list that starts at v 14.   He upholds.  “The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.”  He provides. V15 “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.  You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.”  He’s close.  He’s with us.  V18: “The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.  He fulfills the desire of all who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them.  The Lord watches over all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.”  If that last part sounds too heart, remember that God is just.  He won’t let injustice stand forever.  Does this sound like bad news?  To many, it’s very good news.  He calls us to act against injustice, too.  He enables us to be part of his setting things right as we look forward to the day when all things will be made right.

Praise

In the meantime, we praise.  Like the Psalmist, we begin and end with praise.  The Psalmist ends by restating the intention he started with. V21 “My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord…”   Why?  Because it is right and good and fitting that we should continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of lips that confess his name.  Let us take these words seriously together – “Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of lips that confess his name.”  What is this fruit? Love. Joy.Peace. Patience.  Kindness.  Goodness.  Faithfulness.  Gentleness.  Self-control. 

“… and all flesh will bless his holy name forever and ever.”  This is the praise in which we are invited to join.  May this be true for all of us as we approach the season of Advent (in which we’ll be singing a lot of praise).  May this assure us that we are indeed children of the Kingdom.  May this change us and cause the God’s Kingdom to be known.  God grant that these things may be true for us.

Amen

Think back to your earliest memories of being around the Lord’s Supper, whether you were taking part or watching.  I was watching.  I was going to church since before I was born, though my memories aren’t pre-natal.  For some reason, the Sundays that stand out the most were ones that we spent in the Gaspe region of Quebec in the summertime.  We would go there as a family for a month, and my father would preach at a local church in a little town called New Richmond.  It’s maybe because it was different than my usual Sundays growing up in Humber Summit Community Church that they stand out in my memory.  I remember my father holding up the bread and the cup and asking, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not our partnership in the blood of Christ?  The bread that we break, is it not our partnership in the body of Christ?”  I remember sitting beside my mother and looking up at her.  She would have her eyes closed.  Praying earnestly, you could see it.  I would watch as she would break a piece off the loaf of bread that would be passed along the pew.

I didn’t know a lot, but I knew that this was a big deal.  These were significant moments.

Fast forward around 40 years.  I was a couple of years into my own pastoral calling here at Blythwood, and we were gathering around the Lord’s Table in the Friendship Room here at Blythwood.  When you are leading in worship, you can get caught up in the logistics of things (are the ushers in place, are my sermon notes in order, do I have the right sermon notes, are the slides good).  This may lessen your own feeling of participation in worship together.  I remember that morning we heard a guest soloist sing “Amazing Grace” right before the Lord’s Supper.  I felt my heart strangely warmed, and I felt like a co-invitee (not a presider or facilitator) to the table along with everyone else in a whole new way.  I was there.  I was invited.  I was accepting the invitation.  This feeling has stayed with me ever since.

The Eucharist.  The Lord’s Supper.  The Lord’s Table.  Communion.  We call it different things.  We practice it in different ways.  Daily.  Weekly.  Monthly.  Twice yearly.  It’s one of what Baptists call the ordinances – things that Jesus told us to do.  The other is baptism.  “Do this in remembrance of me.”  This communion Sunday, I want us to consider the significance of how we encounter the hospitality of God at this table.  We heard Peter write “Be hospitable to one another without complaining” (1 Peter 4:9) not long ago.  The hospitality (literally love of the stranger) to which we are called needs to be rooted and grounded in our own experience of the hospitality of God.  We encounter the hospitality of God at this table. 

We remember.  We don’t simply remember the past, but we are re-membered in the present.  We also look ahead at what is to come.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we consider God’s word for us this morning.

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

²³ For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for^[a] you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ ²⁵ In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

We’re looking at the past, present and future significance of our gathering around the Lord’s Table.  We start with a look back.  We commemorate – literally bring something or someone to mind together.  We remember Christ’s birth and life and death.  We can go further back than that of course.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.  We remember the cross together because it has ethical implications for our life together.  Someone has put it like this, “We fix our gaze on Jesus’ self-giving as one of the principle compass points by means of which we chart our course toward newness of life… It is an invitation into a life growing in faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, mutual affection and love…”  Looking to the cross clarifies the answer to the question “How then shall we live?”  as we seek to live together in a way that honour’s God’s unfathomable costly love for us and death on our behalf.

Our seeking together to live in such a way that honours Christ brings us to our present encounter with him at the table.  Just as Jewish celebrants of Passover identify themselves with those delivered from bondage in Egypt, so we identify ourselves with those who encountered Jesus around the Last Supper.  This is a mystery.  This is a wonder.  “This is my body given for you” and “This is my blood shed for you” mean something beyond our ability to explain or reason away.  Let us simply approach this encounter with awe and wonder and reverence.  Christ is in me.  I am in Christ.  Christ is in you, dear sister or brother; you are in Christ. 

Let’s hear more of Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 10:16-17:

¹⁶ The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? ¹⁷ Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

There is a communal element to this meal that is not to be missed.  This is one of the things we were missing greatly when we were unable to gather.  This is why I like to share communion with a big loaf of bread.  We who are many are in body, just as the bread is one loaf.  Unity of spirit, humbleness of mind, sympathy, tenderness of heart.  Together.  Love for one another, together.  Another NT image for the church here.  One loaf.  In our sharing the bread together and encountering Christ together, we ourselves become a visible sign of our unity in him.  This is why I like to call the communion table our family table.  The family table is an important place.  It's where we share life together.  It’s where we celebrate together.  It’s where we mourn together.  It’s where we are sustained together. 

This is our family table, family of God.  We are knit together here as the people of God.  I have heard people say that they have no greater sense of being surrounded by the “great cloud of witnesses” as they do when gathered around this table.  Say something here about missing being together during COVID the fact that some people are sharing online in solitude and we pray that you have a strong sense of sharing in the body of Christ and that if you’d like some of us to visit and share communion with you, we will do that.

Our final reading is a description of the event to which our gathering around the Lord’s Table points forward.  We read about it in John’s vision of Revelation.  It’s described as something celebratory and joyous.  A marriage feast! 

⁶ Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunder-peals, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns.⁷ Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready; ⁸ to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure’— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

⁹ And the angel said^[c] to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ And he said to me, ‘These are true words of God.’ (Rev 19:6-9)

When we gather around this table, we proclaim Jesus’ death until he comes, and we pray, “Even so, Lord Jesus, come.”  The return of our King, the kingdom of heaven come in all its fullness, the renewal of all things is near.  It may be near chronologically.  It may not.  We don’t know.  It is near theologically, in that it is the next part of God’s salvation plan.  Someone has used the image of the hinge of a door to describe where we stand as followers of Christ.  We stand at the hinge point between this age and the age to come.  We remember Jesus’ death.  We remember his promise that he is with us to the end of the age.  We remember that Jesus is the ground of our hope.

We may think of our gathering around the Lord’s Table as a kind of dress rehearsal for the marriage supper of the Lamb that John described.  It’s helping to prepare us for the day that’s been described like this: “… the presence of God permeates and illumines all spaces… and all people walk by his light, seeing everything clearly in the light of God and of the Lamb.  Wealth is no longer seen to be more valuable than the shalom and dignity of each and every person.  The quest to gain power over others is laughable, as we together in the light of the Servant Messiah… The gates of the city are never shut (Rev. 21:25) for every division between an ‘us’ against a ‘them’ has been overcome…”

Like any act of worship in which we take part together, the Lord’s Table is not solely for our benefit.  The question that we must be asking ourselves is, “How is our gathering at the Lord’s Table making us people who reflect the hospitality of God when we go from this place?”  How are the words that we are hearing and the actions that are going on here influencing our words and actions when we are sent from this table?  How is our praise of God here at our worship around this table spilling over into our lives?  Someone has called this “doxological living” – doxa meaning glory or honour or praise or worship.  This kind of doxological or “Lord’s Table Living” is worked out not by us alone but by the Holy Spirit in us.  This is why that we pray as we’re sent from the table “Send us from here in the power of your Spirit to live and work for your praise and for your glory.”

I don’t need to illustrate this when I say that we live in a world that is increasingly divided and polarized.  When we come to this table together, each of us is experiencing something in common – and that experience is grace.  This common experience of God’s grace strips away the things that would divide us.  Not one of us is worthy in and of ourselves to be here.  Not one of us deserves to be invited here, yet in the infinite grace and mercy of God, we are invited.  We may differ in how outwardly respectable or put-together or not put-together or needy we look.  At this table, however, we are reminded of our commonality – our need for the grace of God – our need for the unmerited favour and mercy of God. 

This need for grace extends to every person and situation that we encounter as we go through our days.  Lord’s Table Living asks the question in each encounter: “What does grace call for here?”  What does mercy call for here? 

Five-year-old me wasn’t exactly sure what was going on around the Lord’s Table, but I thought it was a big deal.  As we gather today and in days to come, may the significance of this act continue to cause us to remember, unite us in our present, and look ahead to what is to come.  May our gathering around this table continue to inform all our living through the Holy Spirit of God, and may these things be true for all who hear these words. Amen

At the end of his short letter, Peter turns to the leaders in the congregations to whom he is writing.  The term he uses is elder.  I remember early on in my own pastoral call, getting my hair cut one day.  I was bemoaning to Ralph, my barber, the amount of grey that was in the hair that was landing on the plastic apron I was wearing.  Ralph answered me, and I really have appreciated a lot of the wisdom I’ve heard in the barbershop through my years, “How do you think the people are going to listen to you if you don’t have some grey in your hair?”  What a great way to reframe the situation!

Experience counts for something, though it doesn’t always.  As he closes his letter, Peter addresses the elders in the congregation.  Peter is addressing church leadership.  Church leaders are called different things in the NT – elders, bishops, teachers, deacons.  There is no uniform model which is held up as universal.  Hierarchical or non-hierarchical.  Formal or informal.  Peter makes no distinctions between these categories, and none of that is the point here.  The point, rather, is the message to those who are leading.

So, to those who are leading…  I heard a famous preacher once talk about the difficulty of addressing a group of people with vastly different life experiences, faith experiences, opinions, etc.  He said that one thing to do is to address particular people in the congregation, as in, “Now this is something I want to say to the 30-somethings” or “This is something I want to say to those of you who have been following Christ for a long time.”  Rather than causing people to tune out, it will actually cause people to pay more attention as they wonder what you’re going to say to that particular group!  Peter does something similar here, and remember that this letter would have been read in its entirety to congregations.  These words to leaders are not being shared in secret because everyone should know what is expected of everybody.  Hold me to these standards.  Let us hold every leader to these standards in a world where leadership is so often self-serving, self-aggrandizing, domineering, fame-seeking, abusive. We go along under a different banner.  We go along with the one to whom Peter points once again as he begins this final section.  “Now as an elder myself and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as one who shares in the glory to be revealed, I exhort the elders among you to the tend the flock of God that is in your charge…” (5:1-2a)

We just had an Ordination Examining Council at which various questions were asked.  There’s a scene at the end of John’s Gospel that we might think of as Peter’s Ordination Examining Council.  The thing about Peter is he was a witness to Christ’s sufferings, though not right to the end.  “I don’t know him,” was Peter’s answer to the statement around the fire. “This man was with him.”  “You also are one of them,” came a little later.  “Man, I am not!”  Then, “Surely this man also was with him, for he is a Galilean.”  “Man, I don’t know what you are talking about!” came Peter’s reply.

Peter knew all about living in the grace of Christ.  He learned something about it the day he swam and ran through the shallows to meet Jesus on a Galilean beach. Seven disciples shared a fish breakfast with Jesus.  Then the question came.  “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”  “Do you love me?”  “Do you love me?”  Peter’s ordination examining council question and the most important one to ask of anyone called to lead the people of God.  “Yes, Lord, you know I love you.”  Three denials.  Three questions.  Three answers.  Do you love me?  Feed my lambs.  Tend my sheep.  Feed my sheep.  “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them close to his chest, and gently lead the mother sheep.”  “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”  To you under-shepherds, remember your chief shepherd as you exercise oversight.  Not like this, but like this.  Once again, Peter warns about something by holding it up against what leadership should look like.  Not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you do it.  Not for sordid gain.  In other words, you’re not in this for the cash.  But eagerly.  Do not lord it over those in your charge.  Don’t be domineering.  Don’t be, it’s my way or nothing.  Don’t be “Because I say so.”  But be examples to the flock.

There’s a lot of talk about servant leadership in our culture, which is good.  We need to be able to articulate and live out what it is and what it’s not.  Servant leadership does not consist simply in a leader engaging in what some may consider menial tasks.  Servant leadership does not consist of a leader doing everything for a group of people either, or promoting dependency.  One writer describes servant leadership like this: “The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons?  Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants… First, Peter’s model of leadership is a shepherd whose care, motivated by free submission to God’s call, becomes an example to the flock – a shepherd whose sheep learn to be shepherds.” Peter is talking about leaders who are not in it for their own glory.  Last week, we talked of the goal that we all share – that God be glorified.  That all honour, fame, renown be given to God.  He is our honour.  He is our glory.  He is the one who will give the crown of glory to his shepherds just as they used to give the laurel crowns to athletes.  This crown of glory never fades away.  We are leading for the sake of a glory that is unfading.  What a truth to hang onto in a world where tangible results of leadership can be unseen and where measures or what we consider success ebb and flow. 

“In the same way, you who are younger must accept the authority of the elders.”  In the same way.  In the same loving, caring way.  We said that by “elders,” we can take Peter to mean those who lead in general.  In the same way, we can take “those who are younger” to broadly mean everyone else.  In some (but not all) cases, leadership may be characterized by age.  The church is a voluntary organization, and we are called to willingly place ourselves under the authority of leadership, just as we have been told to put ourselves under the authority of those who govern.  Someone has said this is a godly posture that recognizes God’s authority over everything and everyone.  This does not mean blind acceptance of leadership that is tyrannical or, toxic or, abusive, or domineering.  Care and, compassion and the desire to see one another thrive is always mutual.  I know how congregations can treat church leaders, and it’s not always good.  I’ve been saying in recent weeks how thankful I am to be in a gathering at church in which I hear people pray for me.  I don’t take that lightly or for granted, and it’s not every pastor’s experience.  I’ve been saying how thankful I am that I’m not part of a congregation that places unreasonable expectations on its leaders.  I’m thankful for this and want everyone to know.

For all of us, let us clothe ourselves with humility in our dealings with one another.  Let us put on humility like we put on a piece of clothing.  Another great Biblical image and reminiscent of our shepherd who wrapped a towel around his waist before washing his disciples’ feet.  “You’ll never wash my feet,” said Peter at the time, but he was changed.  Our great shepherd who told his followers, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors.  But not so with you; rather, the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves.  For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table?  But I am among you as one who serves.” (Luke 22:25-27)

Some of Peter’s last words here.  “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time.” (5:6)  Another paradox.  Two things in our faith that we hold together in the wonder of God.  Each of us are called to wear the same clothes (figuratively speaking here.  The shackle of humility.  Young and old.  Women and men.  Rich and poor.  Bowing to one another and lifting one another up so that we are each bowed and lifted.  The good news of grace – of God’s unmerited love and mercy brings us low and lifts us up.  Responding positively to the good news of God’s grace in Jesus is an admission that we need someone outside of ourselves.  Responding positively to the good news of God’s grace in Jesus is an admission that we stand in need of forgiveness and transformation.  God’s grace has been brought near each and every one of us in the birth and, life and death, and rising of Christ.  Once, you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.  God’s grace in Jesus is a visible and tangible demonstration that God loves us.  That God cares for me.  That through the gift of the Holy Spirit, we share in the gracious infinite fulness of our triune God.  That we have been born into a family; that we have an inheritance; that every word and deed may have a purpose – the fame/renown/honour/glory not of myself but of my God.

Who cares for me?  This next section has been called “Don’t Worry, Stay Awake, Fight the Lion.”  “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” (5:7). Peter is not talking about clinical anxiety here.  Cast all your cares on him.  The same word that Jesus used when he spoke of the cares of the world choking the word like weeds choke a plant.  Part of this surely involved discerning what is up to us and what is beyond our control.  What is up to us, and what is up to God?   I’ve said before the church has much to learn from Alcoholics Anonymous in terms of sharing our lives, sharing non-judgemental space in which to be transformed, praying.  The Serenity Prayer which you may have heard, is “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  Throw those things that are beyond us on God and be at peace in Him. 

Discipline yourselves. Keep alert.  “Like a roaring lion, your adversary, the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.”  Our adversary.  The accuser.  The liar.  The slanderer.  Let us not take the devil unseriously.  There are two ways we tend to go wrong here when it comes to our adversary.  One way is to ignore or discount him.  The other way is to attribute everything that goes wrong to him.  My car wouldn’t start this morning – but you won’t get me, devil!  It may be that I need to pay more attention to regular care and maintenance.  The story goes that Martin Luther once threw an ink well at the devil, who had been incessantly accusing him.  We are to take the devil seriously.  He wants to ruin us.  Someone has said it’s not just that the devil wants to tempt us to cheat on our taxes.  He wants to ruin us.  His craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate, on earth is not his equal.  He’s not equal with God, though.  We stay alert, but we’re not called to fear.  Resist him, not in our own strength, but in our faith.  This is something once again we are called to collectively, remembering our brothers and sisters around the city, around the country, around the world.  We resist in our love of God and one another, in our pursuit of holiness together, in reminding one another of our hope together, in our acts of compassion and kindness together, in our unity of spirit and humble minds together.

We’re rushing toward the end of the letter, but there’s time for one more list.  Hold fast together, knowing that suffering is temporary, firm in the truth that “… the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.” (5:11). Restoration.  God putting things back in order.  Support with the sense of making something permanent.  Strengthening.  Establishing in the same way that a house is established on a foundation.  Peter began his letter speaking of grace and peace.  He ends the letter in the same way, along with a reminder that living in the grace and peace of God is something we do together.  “Through Silvanus, whom I consider a faithful brother, I have written this short letter to encourage you and to testify that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it.”  Your sister church in Babylon (how they spoke of Rome) greets you, as does Mark.  Grace is what we share, and it is what we are called to share.  Peter knew it in a whole new way from that day on a Galilean beach.  Once, you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.  How much did we need mercy?  How much do we need mercy?  This grace is not cheap but calls God’s church us into a new way of being, travelling forward together under a banner that is unlike any other.  A peculiar people indeed.  Greet one another with a kiss of love and peace be to all who are in Christ.  May grace and peace be with us, and may this be true for all who hear these words. Amen

In him is life.  I want us to stay with that for a few moments.  We want to be people who take being in Christ seriously.  To live in Christ is to know life – not just for the afterlife or the day of visitation/judgement/renewal of all things which we’ve been speaking about.  Life for that day, yes.  Life everlasting, yes.  But also life now in the Spirit of Christ.  There’s a Marvin Gaye song called “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” in which Marvin Gaye sings, “This ain’t living…”  I’m riffing off that line in my title today.  This Is Living.  We said last week that to live in Christ is to live, as much as we allow, in the infinite gracious loving fullness of the triune God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. How then, sisters and brothers, should we live?  What is our goal?  We set personal goals and there’s nothing wrong with that.  When we’ve been around for a while, we find that we need to hold personal goals loosely.  They change.  Things we thought were goals for our lives career-wise or relationship-wise don’t come to pass.  We end up pursuing things or being pointed in new directions we couldn’t have imagined.  There’s a goal that we all, as followers of Christ, share.  We wonder about God’s will for our lives in a world that is full of ambiguity, and uncertainty, and questions.  There’s a will for our lives, however, that we share as followers of Christ.  How, then, should we live?  Let us ask for God’s help as we look at how Peter closes this section of his letter today.

In the middle of his discussion on ethics – on what a Christlike or cross-shaped life looks like – Peter continues to come back to Christ.  “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin)” (4:1). Peter is writing to a minority religious group who are facing hostility.  We may face hostility, or we may need to be prepared to face hostility in whatever form it takes.  Peter once again uses the language of war here.  Arm yourselves.  He uses the language of war not to promote violence but to underline the seriousness of his subject.  Christ suffered in the flesh.  When he was abused, he did not return abuse.  When he suffered, he did not threaten, but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.  For whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin.  Once again, Peter is speaking of suffering for our faith in Christ.  I don’t believe Peter means here that one who suffers never sins, but that suffering for the faith is galvanizing for faith.  It shows faith to be real.  To turn away from self-serving, self-promotion, and self-absorption.  Even self-preservation.

Faith is serious business, and we want to be people who take it seriously.  People die for their faith in Christ.  People through 2,000 years have been put to death for their faith in Christ.  I was reminded of the story of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna (modern-day Izmir in Turkey), who was put to death in the 2^nd century.  Here’s some of the story:

“Polycarp was brought before the proconsul. He also tried to persuade him to deny the faith. “Respect your age,” he said. “Swear by the divine power of Caesar. Change your mind. Say, ‘Away with the atheists!’ “ But Polycarp, with a solemn look at the unruly mob in the stadium, pointed to them and, looking up to heaven, said, “Away with the atheists!”

The proconsul urged him harder. “Take the oath, and I’ll let you go. Curse Christ.”

“Eighty-six years I have served him, and he never did me any wrong,” said Polycarp. “How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?”

When the proconsul kept insisting, “Swear by the divine power of Caesar,” Polycarp answered, “If you vainly suppose that I will swear by the divine power of Caesar, as you say, and if you pretend that you do not know who I am, listen plainly: I am a Christian. And if you wish to learn the Christian message, arrange a meeting and give me a hearing.”

“I have wild animals,” the proconsul said. “I’ll throw you to them unless you change your mind.”

“Call them in,” Polycarp replied, “for we are not allowed to change from something better to something worse.”

“Scorn the wild beasts, and I’ll have you burned alive if you don't change your mind.”

Polycarp said, “You threaten with fire that burns for a short time and is soon quenched. You don’t know about the fire of the coming judgment and eternal punishment that awaits the wicked. But why are you waiting? Come, do what you will.”

Polycarp radiated courage and joy as he said these and many other things. Not only did his face show no sign of distress, it was so full of grace that the proconsul was astonished and sent his herald into the middle of the arena three times to announce: “Polycarp has declared that he is a Christian.”

Lord God Almighty, Father of your beloved and blessed Child, Jesus Christ, through whom we have received full knowledge of you, the God of angels and powers and of all creation, and of the whole family of the righteous, who live before you:

I bless you for considering me worthy of this day and hour—of sharing with the martyrs in the cup of your Christ so as to share in resurrection to everlasting life of soul and body in the Holy Spirit. May I be received among them into your presence today as a rich and acceptable sacrifice.

For this and for everything, I praise and glorify you through the eternal and heavenly high priest, Jesus Christ, your beloved Child. Through him and with him, may you be glorified with the Holy Spirit, both now and forever. Amen.”

Arm ourselves with the same intention so as to live for the rest of our earthly lives no longer by human desires but by the will of God.  What is the good life?  A life of ease?  A life of doing what we want?  A life of pleasure?  Isn’t all of that really easy to say when we live in the prosperous West?  What about the other 90% of humanity?  You no longer live by such desires but by the will of God, Peter reminds us.   

What is the will of God for our lives?  I like to talk about God’s Big Will.  To make sure we have a secure foundation in God’s Big Will will go far, I do believe, in being able to discern God’s will in the individual aspects of our lives.  God’s Big Will can be summed up by “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and your neighbour as yourself.”  God’s big will is stated very well in Micah 6:8.  “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Mic 6:8)  We have heard Peter get more specific in his letter.  Hope completely.  Be holy.  Live reverently.  Love deeply.  Conduct yourselves honourably, for it is God’s will that by doing right, you should silence the ignorance of the foolish. (2:15)  Honour everyone.  Love the family of believers.  Fear God.  Honour the emperor. (2:17)  Have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind.  Repay abuse with a blessing.  Turn away from evil and do good.  Seek peace and pursue it.

“You have already spent enough time in doing what the Gentiles like to do…”  There’s another song I like by a blues artist who went by the name of Guitar Slim. A track from 1955 called “The Things That I Used To Do.”   The things that I used to do, Lord, I won’t do no more.  Check it out if you like. Different context, same idea.  I’m not saying that fried chicken is sinful, but this had my thinking about my own situation as I attempt to bring my LDL cholesterol level down through diet and exercise.  I have already spent enough time with fried chicken.  It’s over!  Though I may try it say twice a year.  “You have already spent enough time in doing what the Gentiles like to do, living in licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry.”  Excess.  Unhealthy escapism.  Anything that would seek to divide our allegiance.  You’ve done with those things.  Others may be surprised that you no longer join them in the same excesses of dissipation – excesses of “non-saving stuff” literally here in Greek.  Things that do not do anybody any good.  They may mock you for it.  Remember that everyone will have to give an account to him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead.

So be ready.  The end of all things is near.  The end of all things is at hand.  The word translated end here is also goal or purpose.  The goal is at hand.  You might say, “Well, it’s been 2,000 years,” to which I would reply one thousand years in God’s sight is like a day that has just gone by. (2 Peter 3:8)  I would also say we’re not so much speaking chronologically here as we are speaking theologically.  The day of visitation.  The day of judgement.  The renewal of all things, as Jesus described it, is next.  The end of all things is near.  This is not a truth to fear.  This is God’s goal.  It started when Jesus was raised, and a voice was heard in the garden calling out “Mary.”  It will come to completion when a voice will be heard saying, “Look, I am making all things new.” 

A change is going to come.  Here is the thing about something new coming about or a situation changing.  When a change is coming about that will result in a new situation, it should give us a sense of urgency and simplicity.  When we see the end of our life coming, we focus on the things that are most important.  Extraneous matters lose their importance, or we see them for how relatively unimportant they are.  When a tornado is coming, we act urgently and grab only what we need. 

So what do we need together?  Simply and urgently?  A final list!

“Therefore, be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers.” Remain sober.  Sober-minded and also sober, as we heard earlier.  Let us take faith seriously together for the sake of our prayers.  Individually prayers.  Prayers spoken in pairs.  Prayers spoken in small groups.  Prayers spoken in our gathered worship. I like this reminder.  “When in great need, pray.  When discouraged, pray.  When in trouble, pray.  When successful, pray and give thanks.  Just pray day and night.”

Peter always comes back to love.  “Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.”  Maintain deep love for one another.  Strenuous love.  Love that shows itself in effort.  What does it mean that love covers a multitude of sins?  The love to which we are called is other facing.  It turns us away from a self-focussed life.  When members of a faith family love one another, we want to see one another thrive.  Humble love enables us to confess and admit to our own sins and not elevate ourselves when we hear about the sins of others.  Someone has said that the church is a society of sinners, redeemed by grace.  Living in the love and grace of Christ enables us to forgive one another.

“Be hospitable to one another without complaining.”  Hospitality.  Literally, I love the stranger here.  The importance of extending and accepting invitations.  The importance of gathering around tables, around meals, around coffees.  The importance of creating space with one another where gifts can be shared.  The importance of such spaces being a jumping-off point for spaces to be created with people we don’t know. 

Speaking of gifts, “…serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.”  All of these things on this list need us to be gathered together in order for them to be practiced.  We can pray on our own, but we’re not called to just pray on our own.  We can’t love on our own.  We can’t practice hospitality on our own.  We can’t share gifts on our own.  It’s important to note this.  Each of us has received gifts from God, and we are called to live open-handedly with this gift – both in receiving them and sharing them. We discover our gifts and share them in the company of one another.  Peter speaks broadly of gifts here as either spoken or serving.  Words and deeds.  Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God.  Preaching.  Teaching.  Words of wisdom.  Words of encouragement or exhortation.  All our words even.  Whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies.  Giving to those in need.   Welcoming the stranger.  Visiting the sick or the prisoner.   Organizing.  Doing.  All of these things said or done in the strength and resources that God supplies.

At which point, Peter reminds us of the goal.  All of these things to be done not for our own benefit or fame or honour.  All of these things to be done so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ.  All of these things to be done so that all praise, fame, reputation, status, and honour would go to God through Christ Jesus.

What a worthy goal.  What a worthy life.  This is life, indeed.  This is living indeed, dear sisters and brothers.  Peter ends this section in the same way he started – with praise.  To him belong all glory and the power forever and ever.  Amen, and amen.

In a book called A Way in the World, V.S. Naipaul describes a group of peasants from India who had been forcibly removed from their native land and relocated in Trinidad.  This is how his narrator describes their situation: 

“These people were without money, job, without anything like a family, without the English language; without any kind of representation… They were people who had been …lifted up from the peasantry of India and set down thousands of miles away – weeks and weeks of sailing – in Trinidad.  In the colonial setting of Trinidad, where rights were limited, you could have done anything with these people; and they were tormented by the people of the town.  We all lived easily with this kind of cruelty.  We saw it, but we seldom thought about it.”

That tension in which we live between chosen/precious and stranger/exile should be lived in with a heart for those who are displaced.  The people of whom Naipaul writes had no option to become part of the British colonial government or the indigenous people of the island.  The followers of Christ facing hostility, to whom Peter was writing, had a choice – just as we do today as followers of Christ.  One of the choices was to simply walk away.  Along with his message of how to respond (and now not to respond) in the face of hostility, Peter’s message is one of caution in the face of discouragement that we may face.  Hold steady.  Hold fast in the face of whatever it is we are facing.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we hear God’s word for us this morning. 

“Living Beautifully” is the section of Peter’s letter that we’re in.  What does a beautiful life look like? Does the good life depend on our circumstances?  Peter begins this section with words about living the good life together.  Holding steady together.  Holding fast together. Have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind.

Another one of Peter’s lists!  Once again, these things begin and end in Jesus.  Let us hear those words echo, you have been given a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Once, you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.  Once, you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.  So…have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind.  The first and fifth have to do with our minds.  The second and fourth have to do with our emotions.  In the middle is love.

Have unity of spirit.  The body of Christ should reflect the diversity of humanity.  Our richness in variety should be embraced and celebrated in the body of Christ.  We are bound together by the Spirit of Christ.  He is our strength.  He is our rock.  He is our cornerstone.  He is our unity.  To have a unity of spirit does not mean that we agree on everything.  It does mean that we’re sensitive to one another’s opinions and concerns.  It does mean that we maintain loving relationships and loving dialogue.  It goes with humility – the opposite of the desire to have our way, the desire to be first, thinking that we know best in any and every situation.  Have sympathy.  Feeling the same thing.  Feeling the same way about God.  Feeling the same way about one another.  Having tender hearts. 

And in the middle, love for one another.  Can we ever hear this enough?  Does this ever get old?  We are living in the love of God.  We are the people of God.  We are called to enact the love of God together, and our life together is to be the shared act of God’s love.  Together.  The word for love here is filadelphos.  Familial love reflected in acts of affection just as families show affection for one another – anything from a warm embrace to an act of kindness to words that warm the heart.

This is who we are.

“Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing.  It is for this that you were called – that you might inherit a blessing.” (3:9). Remember whose children we are.  Someone has said the opposite of love is the cycle of mean-spirited justice.  Payback.  Insult. Counter-insult.  Punch.  Counterpunch.  Retaliation and retaliation for prior retaliation.  None of these things end up anywhere good.  Any examples that spring to my mind always have to do with driving and how easily people can be drawn into these kinds of cycles on the road.  Online is another good example, I suppose.  Flaming.  Trolling.  Insult.  Counter-insult.  This kind of downward spiral.  Karen Jobe is a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois.  She tells this story in her commentary on 1 Peter: “When I asked students in class one day to come with specific, practical examples of how someone might bless an adversary, the story was shared of a Christian soldier, living in a barracks with his unit.  Each evening, when he would read his Bible and pray before retiring, he was reviled and insulted by the soldier across the aisle.  One night a pair of muddy combat boots came flying at the Christian.  The next morning the hostile soldier found his boots at the foot of his bed, cleaned and polished and ready for inspection.  Several soldiers in this company eventually became Christians as a result of the inner strength of the one who could return blessing for insult.”

We break the cycle of evil or abuse with blessing.  It is for this that we were called.  Peter strengthens his list here with a quote from Psalm 34, which answers the question, “What is the good life?”  What is a good life that goes beyond any circumstance?  What brings beauty to life?  What are good days?  “Those who desire life and desire to see good days, let them keep their tongues from evil and their lips from speaking deceit; let them turn away from evil and do good; let them seek peace and pursue it.” (3:10-11) Are our words building up or tearing down?  Are we speaking blessings or curses?  Peter speaks once again of a turning away from or putting aside or abstaining from evil – sin which destroys relationships.  Turn toward doing good.  This is the outward-facing aspect of holiness.  I saw a lot of good being done on Thanksgiving Monday when a meal was delivered to 45 young people at Horizons For Youth.  Seek peace and pursue it.  Paul tells us, “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” (Rom. 12:18). There are two things to note here.  Firstly, attaining peace might be an impossibility.  Secondly, there is always at least one other party involved.  As far as it depends on us, we are called to do our part.

“Be conspicuously good,” as someone has put it.  Be conspicuous about our goodness and who will harm us?  “Now, who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?”  Peter may simply be hopeful here.  In the face of such goodness, the vast majority of people will not actively seek to harm you.  He may be being ironic here, knowing that harm is coming to those to whom he writes.  It might be a combination of both.  We spoke about suffering unjustly last week.  We spoke about doing right and suffering for it and having God’s approval.  Harm may very well come in whatever form it takes.  “But even if you suffer for doing right, you are blessed.” (3:14) 

The thing to watch out for here is that we’re not earning hostility.  I had a professor in seminary who once told the class, “Don’t let the offence of the cross be the fact that you’re offensive.”  Let us not earn hostility by our own self-righteousness, our own judgementalism, our own hypocrisy.  The scandal of the cross should not be our own scandalous behaviour.  Some years ago, I remember watching a politician at a town hall.  One of the attendees went on a long litany of problems she had had at her workplace, with her employer, with her co-workers, with her union.  Finally, the politician said to her (quite wisely, I thought), “Have you ever considered that the problem might be you?”  Instead, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart and a humble mind.  If you suffer for doing right, you are blessed, for Christ also suffered for sins once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. So what do we have to fear?  What on earth do we have to fear?  We’re not called to be foolish or foolhardy or reckless.  “Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated…” (3:14b). We need to be choosing our fears wisely.  Live reverently was what we heard two weeks ago.  Live in reverent fear of God with awe and wonder, trusting all the time in God’s mercy.  Throwing ourselves on God’s mercy and goodness and justice.  Someone has described our situation in Christ like this when it comes to fear: “He is the one in whom our desires find their end and fulfillment. In him, we already share, as much as we allow, in the gracious infinite fullness of the triune God. What more do we need? What is there to fear?”

Do not fear what they fear.  What is it that they fear?  I suppose it may depend on what one’s hope is based on.  What one’s confident expectation of good is based on?  What is it that they fear?  Loss of status.  Loss of image or social status.  Loss of authority or being part of a privileged group.  Loss of control politically or economically.  Loss of life.  Mortality.  The void.  Staring into the abyss.  In which case, where is hope at all?  “Do not fear what they fear,” writes Peter, and do not be intimidated, “but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.”  Once again, Peter tells us not to do something, but he doesn’t leave us there.  He tells us what to do instead.  But in your hearts, sanctify Christ as Lord.  Now to sanctify something or someone means to prepare it to enter a holy place or make someone holy.  We can’t make God holy, so what is going on here exactly?  How do we sanctify God or lift or lift God up in our hearts – in the centre of our being?  We sanctify God in our hearts when we commit ourselves completely to him, prepared to bear anything for His sake as we have life in Him.  Committing ourselves completely to God in such a way this our commitment becomes evident in each and every aspect of our lives.  This heart commitment is not simply something that we keep in the deepest recesses of ourselves, but it is to made manifest in our good conduct, in our desires, in our decision-making.  In everything.

Now this kind of conduct in our lives is bound to bring up questions from those around us.  In what do you hope?  How is it that you’re able to face what you’re facing with such peace?  On what is your life founded?  A faith?  A philosophy? On what does your hope for the future rest?  Money? Technology? Positive vibes? Your belief in the ongoing progress of humanity?  I really do believe that people, in general, are open to having conversations about the most meaningful questions in life.  At this point, we get to one of the more famous verses in this 1^st Letter of Peter.  “Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you…” (3:15)       

Be ready always.  Let our reading and dwelling on the word of God seep into us; let our reading and dwelling on the word of God capture our hearts.  Let us listen to our friends who are outside the faith, and let us listen to our culture.  What are the concerns that they have?  What are the questions or objections that they have?  How might we best respond to them?  What in our faith resonates with the wider culture?  What is our hope?

What is our hope not?  It’s not followers of Christ becoming angels. It’s not followers of Christ living a disembodied existence strumming harps on clouds.  What is our hope not?  It’s not a wish.  Our hope is the confident the expectation of the goodness of God – now and always.  Our hope is God with us now in the person of God’s Spirit, and God with us forever in a new heaven and new earth at the renewal of all things, the time of visitation, the time of judgement – because evil will not stand forever (and how much does the world need to hear this right now?).  Our hope is the vision of the prophet – the wolf living with the lamb, the leopard living with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child leading them. (Is 11:6)  Our hope involves swords being beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks.  Tanks turned into tractors.  Assault rifles turned into rakes.  Instruments of war become instruments of nurture of the land and produce.  Our hope involves God himself with us, wiping every tear from every eye; death no more; mourning and crying and pain no more.  On what is our hope based?  Emmanuel.  God with us.  Christ among us.  Christ crucified.  Christ living.  Christ ascended.  Christ returning. 

One little word on which our hope is founded.  Christ.  We tell of our hope in Christ with gentleness and reverence and a clear conscience.  We are not called to sell hope or win people over with clever arguments or irrefutable proofs.  What is on offer in the church is simply Christ.  We tell the story of Christ, and we are called to live the story of Christ with gentleness and reverence and a conscience that is clear.  Do not let anyone’s rejection of our hope be because we participate in the ways of the world like manipulation, fear, coercion, lying, abuse, revenge, violence. We are called to live lives that are conspicuously good.  Not based on any goodness of our own but because we are God’s people.  Because we have received mercy.  Because of our dear Christ who also suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous in order to bring us to God.  He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.  Our living hope.  Our life.  Our good.  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift. Amen   

Not so for the Christian faith, of course.  While economic systems don’t promise moral transformation on the part of their adherents.  The Bible declares that we are born again, after all, that we are new creations.  The difference between who we are called and enabled by God to be and who we are has been around for a long time.  “How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” Paul asks, seemingly baffled, of his Roman listeners. (Rom 6:2)

How, then, should we live?  What does love call for here?  What does grace call for here?  What does mercy call for here?  These are the questions we’ve said need to be ever before us, and they’re the questions that Peter addresses in the section of the letter into which we have moved.  This section reflects what was called “household codes” of the day.  It was thought in Roman times that the household provided the foundational building block of society.  This is not a bad thought, really.  If we’re not getting the “How then should we live?” question correct in our own households or in our own churches, we’re hardly going to be getting it right as we make our respective ways through our respective days.  Household codes spoke of how we should conduct ourselves (as we see in v. 13).

Of course, any thought or talk of how we should conduct ourselves is founded on who God is, what God has done, is doing and will do, and what God does in and through us.  Our part is our willing participation in that work.  The first section began and ended with mercy, so let’s come back to those two verses I want us to have memorized by the time this 1 Peter stuff is all said and done.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  By his great mercy, he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”(1:3)

“Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (2:10)

We live and move and have our being in the light of God’s mercy.  How, then, shall we live?  We have been set apart by God to live among the nations and to be a blessing among the nations.  How, then, shall we live?  Let’s come to God in prayer as we hear what God has to say to us through God’s word this morning.

Right at the beginning of this section, Peter reminds his listeners about who they are.  “Beloved” is how he starts.  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…” is how we once typically began wedding services.  Beloved.  We may say, “How can Peter be saying this when he’s never even met these people?”  He’s reminding them of what their status is in Christ.  Beloved of God.  Living in the love and mercy of God.  Beloved of God.  This truth that underpins everything.  Peter is making things very personal here.  “I urge you…” He says.  This is the first time he’s written in the first person.  I entreat/exhort/beg you.  As aliens and exiles.  This takes us back to the tension that Peter introduced right at the start of the letter.  Followers of Christ, you are chosen and beloved. Followers of Christ, you live as resident aliens, refugees, exiles, strangers in a strange land.

The thing about living as strangers in a strange land – people tend to be watching you closely when you’re a stranger.  Nine years ago, we went on our third trip to Bolivia through Canadian Baptist Ministries.  This time it was with friends from Weston Park Baptist Church.  We spent a week in a town called Mizque in the Cochabamba Region.  We were working on houses to help prevent the spread of Chagas disease.  Mizque is a small town, and I remember walking through the streets of Mizque early in the week.  We attracted a lot of attention!  Who were these 14 strangers? 

As aliens and exiles, people are paying attention to you.  “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.”  Rid yourselves.  Put aside in the same way that one would put aside clothing that no longer fits.  Abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.  Now certain things may spring to mind when we say “desires of the flesh.”  There is no body/soul duality being put forth by Peter.  Nor is the idea that bodily desires are in and of themselves bad things.  We said not long ago that desires become harmful when they are misdirected.  They come from our fallenness.  They are not of God.  They may originate in our minds and thoughts, or they may be physical.  We heard about some of them last week – malice, guile, insincerity, envy, slander.  Peter will list some more in chapter 4 – “licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry.” (4:3) 

This is serious business.  These things wage war against the soul.  War is a serious business.  War is hell, as has been said.  We’re in a struggle.  Peter’s original readers and listeners would have been familiar with Roman war tactics and the devastation that they brought.  The most advanced army in the known world of the time.  The Romans would advance toward an enemy in line silently.  When they came close enough, they would throw javelins, shout, and rush -throwing their enemy into disarray.  They perfected siege techniques like catapults and siege ramps – ramps that would be constructed of earth and stones and whatever else was at the end.  Those in the besieged city could only watch and wait for the ramp to get high enough and their end to come.  This is serious business.  Later in the letter, Peter will speak of the devil going about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. This is serious business.

In order to counteract disordered desires which result in lives turned in on themselves, Peter goes on to speak about lives that are turned toward others.  A good friend of mine often talks how acts of service help us get outside ourselves and the problems and challenges which can overwhelm when we are living self-focussed lives.  Peter doesn’t simply say, “resist those desires of the flesh as best you can.”  Peter rather offers an active way in which these desires can be counteracted. 

“Conduct yourselves honourably among the Gentiles.”  This is an all of life thing.  Other translations say things like “Live such good lives,” or “Be careful to live properly,” or “Keep your behaviour excellent” among the Gentiles.   I like to say, “Don’t be jerks,” but Peter is keeping it positive here.  The word is commonly used for good – kalos.  The word also signifies beautiful.  It’s the same word that Jesus used to describe himself as the good shepherd in John 10.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  The beautiful shepherd.  “For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls” is how our passage ends.  Live beautifully with a beauty that goes far beyond just what we look like.  We’ve heard some examples of what a beautiful life looks like, and we’re going to hear more from Peter.  Self-­ discipline (1:13; 4:7; 5:8), reverence for God (1:17; 2:17), compassion (3:8), humility (3:8), love for one another (1:22; 2:17; 3:8; 4:8), godly submission (2:18; 3:1; 5:5), respect for secular authorities (2:13– 14, 17), nonretaliation (3:9– 11), and hospitality (4:9). This kind of life serves two purposes here for Peter.  One, orienting ourselves toward life-giving actions re-orients us away from self-absorption.  Two, such actions serve as a witness to the world of our life-giving God.  They may even end up glorifying God when the day of visitation comes.

Accept the authority of every human institution, knowing that you belong to a higher authority.  This is in response to malicious talk that followers of Christ are those who seek to disrupt the peace of the Empire.  It’s also a subversive reminder to followers of Christ about who is really in control and under whose authority they live. All Christians belong first to God, and the call on our lives is to act for the good of the society in which we live.  All political leaders are human.  They are neither divine nor saviours.  They are due the same honour and respect we are called to give to all.

You’re servants or slaves of God.  Live as free people.  Do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil.  What does it mean to be free?  There’s a prevailing attitude in society that being able to do what you want is freedom.  As followers of Christ, we are at the same freed from subjection to sin and servants of God.  Martin Luther described this tension very well when he said, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”

Speaking of servants or slaves, Peter addresses them starting in v 18.  He doesn’t condemn or condone slavery itself.  It was a part of life in the Roman Empire.  Unfortunately, these verses about enduring beatings have been used to justify slavery in more modern times – and to justify the mistreatment of slaves.  To those who would say things like “The Bible promotes slavery,” I would say this.  There are Biblical truths which run completely counter to the practice.  Truth like “We are all made in God’s image” or “We are all one in Christ Jesus.  No Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.”  So why are we making hierarchical distinctions exactly?  Peter does not condemn or condone slavery.  He’s speaking to a condition in which some of the church to whom he’s writing would have found itself.  To slaves.  It would have been amazing to those slaves that he’s addressing them at all and addressing them first.  “If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that?”  This reminds me of a story about Socrates.  When his wife bemoaned the fact that he was suffering unjustly told her, “Would you rather I was suffering justly??” 

But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval.  For to this, you have been called.  And we realize that Peter is actually talking to all of us who are servants of Christ.  For to this, you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you should follow in his steps.  “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.  When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly”

We may think this kind of thing is beyond us, but we shouldn’t.  This is the thing about the Christian faith and spiritual/moral transformation that sets it apart from an economic system, a political system, a philosophy or code or “-ism.”  Followers of Christ can be poor advertising for Christianity.  I can be poor advertising for Christianity.  The thing is, we’re not just espousing a set of principles or striving to live by a set of principles.  We’re walking with Christ, who is our holiness.  We’re walking with Christ, who is the good shepherd and guardian of our souls.  He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that, free from sins, we might – live for ourselves.  No.  That we might live for righteousness.  By his wounds, we have been healed.     

He did not return abuse when he suffered.  In Christ, unjust suffering would save the world.  Who would have thought?  It’s not beyond us to live like this.  The impact of such living could be beyond our imaging.  Rep. John Lewis wrote of his participation in a protest in Selma, AL, on March 7^th, 1965, like this:  “ABC Television cut into its Sunday night movie … with a special bulletin. News anchor Frank Reynolds came on-­ screen to tell viewers of a brutal clash that afternoon between state troopers and black protest marchers in Selma, Alabama. They then showed fifteen minutes of footage of the attack…. The American public had already seen so much of this sort of thing, countless images of beatings and dogs and cursing and hoses. But something about that day in Selma touched a nerve deeper than anything that had come before …. People just couldn’t believe this was happening, not in America. Women and children being attacked by armed men on horseback — it was impossible to believe. But it happened. And the response from across the nation to what would go down in history as Bloody Sunday was immediate.”    

Living beautifully.  We’re going to spend the next few weeks as Peter expands on this topic in the coming weeks. May God enable it in our hearts and lives.

Amen

Do we ever feel, as followers of Christ, that we are lacking motivation in life?  Do we ever feel that we could really use some encouragement?  The 1^st letter of Peter is a letter which serves to counteract pressures that followers of Christ are facing. Over the next several weeks, we are going to be reminded of who we are in Christ and what this means for us as followers of Christ.  Living hope.  Living stones.  Living love.  Who are we, and on what hope is our identity founded?  What does it mean to live that hope?  What does it mean that we are living stones?  This letter, of course, is from the man who was given the nickname “Rock” or “Rocky” if you prefer to think of Peter that way.  Authorship is disputed, as it is in many NT letters.  We’ll be moving through these weeks under the assumption that this letter was written by the apostle Peter.  It has been speculated that the letter was written by a community that Peter founded or perhaps edited by Silvanus. There is no way of confirming any of these positions, and it shouldn’t matter in terms of what this letter, written under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, had to say to a group of 1st-century believers in modern-day Turkey – along with what this letter, written and read under the guidance and presence of the Holy Spirit of God has to speak to our hearts today.

Living hope.  Living stones.  Living love.  Let’s ask for the Holy Spirit’s help as we consider God’s word this morning.  Let us pray.

Peter begins with matters of identity and honour.  Remember, you followers of Christ, who you are.  Remember whose you are.  Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.  That’s it.  That’s all he needs, really.  No talk of Christ’s inner circle or anything about his biography.  The one who saw Christ transfigured. The one who denied him.  The one who ran to the tomb to find it empty.  The one who was re-commissioned by him over a fish breakfast on a Galilean beach.  One of the groups who saw Jesus taken up into the clouds and heard the angels say, “Why are you standing around?  He’ll come back the same way!”  Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.  At the Last Supper, just before Peter’s declaration that he will follow Jesus anywhere, even to prison, even to death, Jesus tells Peter this: ³¹ ‘Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, ³² but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” (Luke 22:31-32)  And so we pray that we may be strengthened as we hear the words of Peter.

Who shines the spotlight directly on Christ.  We ask questions like how then will we live?  How will I be able to cope?  What is the thing that will make me resilient?  There is a lot of talk about resiliency in our world and the need for it.  If there is one aspect of the human condition that is universal, it is the fact that suffering is our lot.  Uncertainty is our lot.  Things being beyond our control is our lot.  We all know what it means to hurt, and if we don’t, then we will.  Everybody hurts sometimes.

Even followers of Christ.  The invitation to take up Christ’s call to follow him is ever before us, of course.  Every day, for the 10,000^th time or the 1^st time.  Even in the following, we hurt.  Peter does not shy away from speaking about reality.  In his opening, he addresses his readers as exiles of the Dispersion.  Scattered.  The word for exile here really has more to do with being a foreigner in another country.  A stranger in a strange land.  It’s a famous image.  Used of Abraham literally (Gen 23:4).  Used by the Psalmist metaphorically (Ps 39:12).  Used by the songwriter of “Wayfaring Stranger” metaphorically with the addition of movement thrown in.  A pilgrim people making our way home together.  It’s a condition that some of us have experienced in our lives.  Being a stranger in a strange land.  Without all the rights that go along with being a citizen.  The difference here is that there’s no possibility of moving toward citizenship.  There’s simply an unsettling feeling of strangeness here for the follower of Christ.  It may be manifested in persecution – it does in many parts of the world.  It may be manifested in being socially shunned or shamed.  It may be manifested in looking around us as we go through our days and feeling a disconnect between what we value the most in this world and what we see going on around us.  If we don’t feel any of this, we may need to consider how much we’re buying into the world around us.

So Peter writes to the strangers, exiles, the foreigners, the pilgrims, and here things take a turn… the chosen.  Strangers yet chosen.  Exiles yet chosen.  Foreign residents yet chosen.  One of the tensions in which we live as followers of Jesus.  Exiled/foreign yet chosen, privileged, set apart for holiness by God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  This is a tension that, as a theme, will run through this letter.  I have to say at this point too, that we are not to abandon the world or leave the world to it’s own devices, just as God did not abandon the world and leave it to it’s own devices.  How do we live in such a tension?  Do as Peter does and turn the spotlight directly on God before we do or say anything else.  Let us put first things first, as Peter does here at the start of his letter.  “Who have been chosen and destined by the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ, and to be sprinkled with his blood.”  Chosen.  Known.  Sanctified.  Made new.  Being made in the very image of Christ.  Forgiven.

This is who you are.  This is your honour, dear brothers and sisters.  This is who we are; this is our honour.

Because we are not called to do any of this or be any of this on our own.  May grace and peace be yours in abundance.  Because we need grace and peace.  How else will we live?  What does it mean to live in the grace of God – the unmerited, undeserved favour of God?  What does it mean to be living hope in the midst of uncertainty or fear or being shunned?  To experience peace in the middle of it no matter what our circumstances?   Peter is shining a spotlight steadily on Christ, and he begins his letter with one long sentence in the original – from verse 3 all the way down to verse 12 in our Bibles.  The sentence starts with praise.  We all praise something.  Someone.  I watched a lot of the US Open and was struck by the reaction of the crowds to exploits of the players.  Standing.  Clapping.  Cheering.  Yelling.  I’m sure a lot of them are otherwise very staid people!  I’m not saying anything against sports.  I like sports.  I’m saying that a life lived where the only praise we give publicly is at sports events may come up rather lacking.  A life lived without praise to God may end up rather empty.   I have to praise you, Lord!  We have to praise you, Lord! What else could we do in the light of God’s mercy?  We’re called to do this praise together.  This is why we sing.  This is why we repeat Psalms of Praise together.  This is why we throw up our hands and say “Amen” and dance.  We are formed by what or whom we praise.  We’re formed together as followers of Christ in praise of Christ.  It’s important that we understand this when we consider the complete and utter necessity of gathering together for worship meaningfully and regularly.  Doing some guest preaching this summer with a family of faith that I hadn’t seen in some time, I was struck by how much each service of worship together is like a little family reunion.  We have been born into a new family by the mercy of God, sisters and brothers.  What else could we do but praise Him? So here it is: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead.” (1:3)  Our praise doesn’t have to be loud or demonstrative.  Our praise can consist of repeating this verse.  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  By his great mercy, he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead.  This is the gift of God.  Unmerited.  Undeserved.  A gift.  A new birth.  A gift just as the birth of any child is a gift – we did nothing to plan or earn being born.  A new birth into a living hope.  Hope not simply a wish for or even a longing for, but the confident expectation of good, no matter what is going on.  Hope that is in no way based on myself or any of the things in this world in which we might place a confident expectation of good, but based on the work of God in Christ and in the Spirit. 

Before we can understand how to live in our situation and how to react to our situation, we need to know what our situation is – along with what our situation will be.  The word narrative has become so overused, and at times, it seems that to say “narrative” means little more than “spin.”  This is the divine narrative, though.  This is the divine story (which these days is maybe a better word) into which we, as followers of Christ Jesus, have been caught up.  This is who we are in God’s story.  Members of a family whose birthright is an inheritance.  “Will we be mentioned in the will?”  is a question that’s often on people’s minds.  Countless film scenes (mostly murder mystery-type films, it seems) depict the reading of a will along with positive and negative reactions on the part of family members. Peter reminds his readers (and us that the inheritance of which he speaks is not based on goods which perish or something of such fleeting value as money or even land (as difficult as that may be to see in our current economic climate).  The inheritance into which the follower of Christ is born is rather “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1:4-5)

Peter takes the long view. “The last time,” he calls it.  The renewal of all things.  But the long view affects the here and now.  My inheritance as a follower of Christ is one of salvation.  Deliverance.  Rescue.  Deliverance from a life which lacks meaning.  Deliverance from a life of despair.  Deliverance from death itself.  What do I have to fear?  This salvation will be known one day in its fullness, but we know it in part every day.  All of this through the mercy of God.  My hope is living. My hope is alive because Christ is living because Christ is alive.

This is why we make such a big deal about Easter every year.

Peter has been speaking a lot so far about what God has done, but the matter of our own reaction to God’s story is brought up by him here in v 5 with two words – “through faith.”  “…you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time.”  Through faith.  Through trust.  God has chosen.  God adopts us.  God makes us new.  God bequeaths.  God protects.  God delivers.  The call on our lives as followers of Christ is trust.  Followers of Christ, let me ask you a question.  Has God not proven Himself worthy of all your trust? “Although you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy.”  We used to sing a hymn when I was younger in which we sang about joy unspeakable and full of glory (and the half has never yet been told).

It is on this note of rejoicing that we’ll end.  Peter does not shy away from the reality of his readers’ situations. We will all face situations, and we may be facing them right now.  “In this, you rejoice, even if now, for a little while, you have had to suffer various trials so that the genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1:6-7)  We’re not talking about a false grinning and bearing it, but a recognition that joy is a gift of God, and we have the right to know it as followers of Christ no matter the trial.  Trials are not simply something we need to deal with or cope with, but we may definitely rejoice in them.  We’re not just sloganeering here.  These are not simply empty phrases.  Someone has put it like this:

“These claims can sound like religious jargon, but anyone who has immersed himself (or herself) in life long enough has tasted the bitter pains that life hurls at humans. Again, it can sound like rhetoric, but it was not rhetoric for Peter. He walked with Jesus and suffered arrest and threats for the crime of telling the truth about him. To be sure, we can deceive others and deceive ourselves with vapid talk of joy, but it is good and right to have peace at 3 A.M. when troubles interrupt our sleep.”

“You are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1:9) 

Peter speaks in our passage of a salvation that is ready to be revealed.  The word for ready is the same one that was used in the context of a group of people being called to a table that is ready.  We’ve been invited to the table.  We can smell the goodness.  We know the goodness of the One who has prepared it.  May each of you accept the invitation each and every day, and may this be true for us all. Amen

I attended the CBOQ Annual Assembly this past June.  A lot of Baptists gathered together at the **** Hotel in Mississauga.  One of the first big gatherings since the pandemic – certainly the biggest since the pandemic.  We watched a video featuring a pastor from a Hispanic church in Montreal.  This pastor had to flee his native El Salvador in the early 80’s.  For many in his country at the time, it was either be killed or flee.  He fled, wanted to come to Toronto, but ended up in Montreal.  His own experience of being a stranger in a strange land affected the rest of his life.  He has a special place in his heart for the stranger, for the immigrant, for the exile, for the displaced.  He knows what it’s like to arrive in a new country with all your possessions in a suitcase. 

In reflecting on what we looked at last week as we started the 1^st Letter of Peter and thinking of Peter’s image of the follower of Christ as stranger/resident alien/exile, we were able to have conversations about what being a stranger looks like literally.  Many of us, as we said, have this experience – whether we’re experiencing it now or have experienced it in the past.  Unsettling.  Uncertain.  Displacement.  Strangeness.  If we haven’t experienced displacement personally (like myself), may we learn from our brothers and sisters who have?  What are the sorrows?  What are the joys?  What are the things which make life difficult?  How may we support one another in these difficulties?  How can we join with one another in celebrations? Because here is the thing.  For the follower of Christ, the situation in which we all find ourselves is one of foreignness.  We said that for followers of Christ, this may be manifest in persecution.  It may be manifest in social shunning or even estrangement.  It’s hard!  Here’s the thing, though.  We have family around us.  We have kin all around.  Peter is writing this letter of encouragement to a group of people he hasn’t met.  Remember who you are, he told us last week.  This week is “Remember what this means in your lives.” Not because you aren’t already, because there’s no hint from Peter that his readers/listeners aren’t doing these things.  You’ve been born into a living hope.  An inheritance if yours, and that inheritance is deliverance which you are experiencing right now and which you will experience in its fullness. How, then, should we live in the face of these wonderful truths?  We’re going to look at four imperatives that Peter gives us.  The first three have to do with our relationship with God.  Hope completely.  Be holy.  Live reverently.  Love deeply.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we look at God’s word this morning. 

Hope Completely

“Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring when he is revealed.” (1:13). Hope completely.  Hope is expressed in this first chapter of Peter as both a noun and a verb.  Hope is something that we have.  We have been given a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead.  Hope is also something that we do.  Set all your hope.  Hope completely.  Hopefully.  All of this hoping is based on the one who has been raised from the dead.  Hope not as wishfulness or wistfulness, but hope that is great expectation.  Hope in God who has time and time again proven himself worthy of our trust, worthy of our confident expectation of good.  Peter describes how we should be hoping in two ways in this first verse of our passage.  “Prepare your minds for action” is how our NRSV has translated the first way, with a note in our Bibles that describes the image he actually uses here – “Gird up the loins of your mind.”  What’s that all about?  It’s a description of how an outer garment would be cinched up around one’s waist when it was time for action.  We might say something like, “Roll up your sleeves.”  I spent many of my formative years in the country, as many of you know, and our experiences shape us profoundly.  One of the legacies of that time is this pair of boots that I keep by the side door at our house.  When it comes time for any work outside, it’s time to put my boots on (I have liners for them for winter too).  Gird up the loins of your mind.  Prepare yourselves.  Get your boots on.  Resolve to take our hope seriously.  Be serious.  What would happen to us if we really took all of this God stuff seriously?  Discipline yourself is the second way that Peter describes how we should be hoping as followers of Christ.  Sober up!  Avoid indulging in anything that would take us out of our heads.  Prepare your minds and discipline yourselves does not mean that we’re talking simply about an intellectual exercise, but as the part of our life that determines how we conduct ourselves.  This word for discipline denotes restraint, moderation, the avoidance of an excess of rashness or confusion.  Self-control, as Paul describes it in his Fruit of the Spirit list.  Someone has put it like this – “Peter wishes his readers to avoid any form of mental or spiritual intoxication that would confuse the reality that Christ has revealed and deflect them from a life steadfastly fixed on the grace of Christ.” 

Remain fixed and grounded in our hope.  Remain fixed and grounded in the promises of God.  I like to ask the question, “What are some of the promises of God that you have found to be most meaningful or that you find most meaningful at this stage of your life?”  Our hope in Christ is not wishfulness or wistfulness but a confident expectation of good.  Remain in that hope completely.

Be Holy

“Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance.  Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct: for it is written, ‘You shall be holy as I am holy.’” 

“How then shall we live?” is the question that always needs to be before us.  It’s the question that we should always be discussing.  What does grace call for here?  What does love call for here?  We’re going to get quite pointedly to love at the end of this passage, but it permeates all of it.  The operative image here goes back to that of family.  We’ve been given a new birth into a new family.  The call on our lives is to bear the family image.  As he who called you is holy.  “In all your conduct” simply means “In your whole way of life.”  Peter does not write a virtue list here (though we’ll see next week that he describes what holiness does not look like in God’s family).  We have a responsibility as family members, just as we do in any family.  Do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance.  “Do not be conformed to this world,” as Paul puts it in Romans 12:2, “But be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”  Be transformed by being made new in this family. 

Our God is completely holy.  Our God is wholly other.  Our God is not just separate from sin but without parallel.  Without competition.  Without any confusion between the Creator and the created.  You have been called by this God to be set apart, to reflect God’s ways.  Let us be who we have been called to be.  We acted in ignorance.  We followed desires or cravings that were self-seeking, whether it was money or power or pleasure, because we thought that was where life was found.  We’re reminded of this constantly, aren’t we?  Let us satisfy our own desires for our own ends, and who cares about the ramifications for others or for the earth itself?  There’s nothing wrong with desires or cravings.  The problem is when desires or cravings get misdirected.  We’ll talk next week about the pure spiritual milk which we are called to crave as followers of Christ.  We’ve been called into a new family.  Let us become together who we are in this family, dear sisters and brothers.        

Live Reverently

“If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during your exile.  You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.  He was destined before the foundation of the world but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake.  Through him, you have come to trust God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.” (1:17-21)

Followers of Christ are to be focused on Christ in a seriously exclusive way, as someone has said.  Pin all your hopes on God.  Be all in on God.  Allow the holiness of God to guide the way you conduct your life in all of life.  Live all of life in reverence.  Reverent fear is the way our NRSV Bibles translate it.  Do not let familiarity with God breed contempt or apathy, or indifference.  Leave room in our lives and in our worship spaces for reverence and awe out of a deep sense of gratitude and wonder at what God has done.  He has bought us.  He has freed us.

He is our loving Father.  It’s not unknown for us to ignore loving parents, though, or to take them for granted, is it?  He is our Judge.  When we’re talking about reverent fear of God, we’re not talking about abject terror or debilitating fear that God is a divine figure ready to throw a lightning bolt at us should we go wrong.  Anyone who has ever stood before a judge knows that, to some extent, their future is in the hands of the judge.  We live confidently and expectantly in the mercy of God.  There is room for fear and caution to exist side by side.  As someone has said, “There is a kind of fear that does not contradict confidence. A confident driver also possesses a healthy fear of an accident that prevents him or her from doing anything foolish.”  Let us live in reverent fear during the time of our sojourn.  

Love Strenuously

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love love one another deeply from the heart.”

The first three imperatives have to do with taking our connection with God seriously.  The final imperative has to do with taking our connection with one another seriously.  Love deeply.  Love constantly.  Love strenuously.  The word for how we are to love signifies an all-out, no-holds-barred effort.  In the Greek translation of the OT, the people of Nineveh “yelled up to God strenuously.” (Jon 3:8)  In the book of Judith, this is the reaction of the people of Israel when facing Assyrian invasion – “And every man of Israel yelled up to the Lord in great strenuousness, and they humbled their souls in great strenuousness, themselves and their wives and their babies and their cattle, and every sojourner or day-labourer, and their slaves… and fell on their faces toward the Temple, and put ashes on their heads, and stretched out their sackcloth before the Lord and draped the altar in sackcloth and yelled up to the God of Israel in unison strenuously.” (Jud 4:9-12) Love one another as if everything depended on it.  Love as not simply a feeling but a way of life.  Love as a choice that we make moment by moment.  Love that we show not just in word or speech but in deed and in truth.  Because love is of God. Although you have not seen him, you love him. All talk and action of love based on who God is and how God loves us.  Because we have been born into a new family, while we may be strangers in a strange land, we have family here. We have family here.  May God help us all to continue together to hope completely, be holy, live reverently and love deeply.  May this be true for all of us.

Amen

Here's the thing, dear family.  Followers of Christ have been given a new birth.  Followers of Christ have been given a new existence.  The word for Peter to the churches to whom he is writing is this – all of these identity markers pale in comparison to who we are in Christ.  Here it is: “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (2:10). It is better to ask of ourselves, “Whose are you?” than “Who are you?” Whose are you?  It’s a good thing for a communion Sunday to be talking about tasting.  Have you tasted that the Lord is good?  This is the thing about tasting something good.  It’s something that we have to experience ourselves, isn’t it?  There are countless shows which feature people tasting food all around the country (and indeed all around the world).  You gotta eat here!  Stanley Tucci eats his way around Italy.  These appeal to us, but watching someone else eat something in no way compares to us experiencing the taste of something good ourselves. 

Have you tasted that the Lord is good?  The Psalmist sings the invitation – “O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.” (Ps 34:8)  The prophet Isaiah makes a similar invitation – “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat!  Come buy wine and milk without money and without price.” (Is 55:1)  I can tell you what the goodness of God is like but it’s really something you have to experience for yourself.

We looked at four imperatives from Peter, which are based on the new birth into a living hope which we have been given through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  Hope completely.  Be holy.  Live reverently.  Love deeply or love strenuously.  We talked last week about what some of these things look like, though Peter doesn’t list them.  As our passage of today begins, Peter lists what loving deeply does not look like in the family of faith.  “Rid yourselves…” which could be translated “Put aside….” In the same way, we would rid ourselves of clothing that no longer fit or was worn out.  Put aside the worn-out clothing.  “Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander.”  Peter is addressing the community of faith in Christ, the family that belongs to Christ.  He’s talking particularly about ways in which we mess up interpersonal relationships.  Things that are poison in a family or in a community.  Most of the things in this list have to do with words or show up in our words.  Put aside malice.  Ill will – particularly when we feel we have been treated badly.  You remember who was treated badly and bore no ill will.  Put aside guile or deceit.  Concealing or misrepresenting the truth, particularly when done for self-gain.  Put aside insincerity or hypocrisy.  Pretense.  Love one another sincerely, deeply, strenuously.  Put aside envy – resentful longing for something that belongs to someone else (whether goods, a person, gifts, talents).  Put aside slander.  Talking smack.  Talking badly about somebody. 

Lay them all aside like you would lay aside tattered, ruined clothing.

Be like newborn infants longing for milk.  We said last week that desires or cravings or longings are not necessarily bad in and of themselves.  We’ve been created by God to long or desire.  Problems begin when our longings or desires get misdirected.  Opposite the list we just heard about what does not look like goodness, opposite the list of things we are to lay aside, Peter writes of what we should be following for as followers of Christ.  Peter has gone back to the image of new birth and is saying long for the pure spiritual milk, just as newborn infants do.

Aside – The Bible women and men among you (you know who you are, and we should all be like you) are saying at this point, “This reminds me of something else in the NT!”  Paul uses the same kind of language around milk in his letter to the Corinthians – “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food.  Even now you are still now ready.” (1 Cor 3:2)  In Hebrews 5:12 the preacher (because you can consider Hebrews one long sermon really) writes “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food;”  Both of these passages are speaking of how immaturely in Christ the people to whom they are writing are acting.  They need to move beyond milk and get to something solid.  End of aside

This is not what Peter is saying or how Peter is using this image of us as newborn infants.  Remember, he’s not writing this letter to address a particular issue that has come to his attention.  It’s a letter of encouragement above all.  Be like newborn infants who long for milk.  We like to see well-nourished babies, don’t we?  No one ever says of a newborn infant, “Oh, they’re looking so slim!  Have they lost weight?”  “Look at those cute fat rolls on their arms and legs!” we say.  I’ve heard that anyway.  Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk.  The thing about this analogy is that we are meant to be in this state, longing for the pure spiritual milk all our lives so that by it, we may grow into salvation.  What is our goal as followers of Christ?  What is our goal as followers of Christ together?  Someone has said, “  The goal of every Christian’s life here on earth is to fully mature, becoming the person God intends for each of us to be; simultaneously, all believers together are growing into the mature fellowship we ought to be.”  All the while remaining like newborn infants who long for milk.  “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” the Psalmist sings. (Ps 42:1-2) 

What is this pure spiritual milk?  It’s pure.  Unadulterated. Without deceit.  Without guile.  Nothing but good for us.  The opposite of deceitful or full of guile.  It’s spiritual.  It’s been translated as the pure spiritual milk of the word or reasonable milk.  The word that’s translated spiritual in our NRSV Bibles is the same one in Romans 12:1 – “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual/reasonable worship.”  It’s metaphorical milk from God.  It’s God’s word.  It’s the capital W Word.  It’s going through our days connected to God the way a newborn is connected to their mother’s breast.  It’s prayer.  It’s spiritual and reasonable.  It nourishes our reason, our intellect.  It nourishes our soul.  We receive it in our personal practices through which we devote ourselves to God.  We receive it in our gathered life together, in our gathered life around this table (communion table).  We receive it in conversation together and with those who have gone before us through their writing.  Long for this pure spiritual milk, writes Peter, and not just because it’s good for you.  I know we eat things because they’re good for us, and oftentimes, they don’t taste that good.  I know this from a lot of present personal experience.  If you’ve tasted the pure spiritual milk of the word, then you know that not only is it good for you, but it is your delight.  “He has filled the hungry with good things,” sang Mary.  (Luke 1:56)  “Your words were found,” proclaimed the prophet Jeremiah, “And I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart…” (Jer 15:16)

Lord, give us all a longing for pure spiritual milk.  May we know that longing as we come to him together, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let ourselves be built into a spiritual house…” (2:4-5)  Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, or “you yourselves are being built into a spiritual house.”  This wonderful image of the church – each one of us not merely another brick in the wall but living stones founded on the One who is our living Hope.  Let ourselves be built to be a holy priesthood.  Each and every one of us together to serve God, just as the priests of old were called to serve God.  This role used to be restricted to those of a certain tribe, those descended from Aaron.  In God’s new household, the call on each and every one of our lives is to offer our sacrifice of praise, our sacrifice of thanksgiving, our sacrifice of broken spirits and contrite/repentant hearts, our sacrifice of ourselves.

What’s going on when we approach Christ’s table this day?  We are coming to him, a living stone.  A stone chosen and precious.  A stone rejected because this stone was not indestructible.  This stone could be mocked, beaten, killed.  Who would want to set themselves on such a stone?  A stone that, in dying and being raised, would make a way for us back to our loving God and, in so doing, save the world.  “For in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him, God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, through the blood of his cross.” (Col 1:19-20)  This is what’s going on as we approach Christ’s table today.  We are all living stones being built into a spiritual house.

This is who we are, sisters and brothers.  In our hyper-individualistic society, we tend to think that the answers to questions of identity start with “I.”  The descriptions of those who belong to Christ in this second chapter of 1 Peter are all in the plural.  You all are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.  Not existing solely for our own benefit but that we might proclaim the mighty acts of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvellous light.  What does this mean for us as individuals and the church?  I read a description of the church recently as “intentional community.”  Someone has described what Peter is saying about the church as living stones together means like this – “… following Christ entails joining his community, the church.  To accept the Redeemer means also accepting the people he has redeemed.  The freelance Christian who follows Jesus but is too good, too busy, or too self-sufficient for the church is a walking contradiction.  In the old covenant, God set his people apart from the nations.  In the new covenant, he sets us apart as we live among the nations.”

Once, you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.  Once, you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift as we come to him together at his table.

Amen

So last week, we looked at a classic redemption story.  The prodigal son is brought back.  The young man who went off and spent his father’s money in riotous living; the young man who came to the end of his own resources; the young man who was lost is found! He’s welcomed with open, loving arms by his father and the calf they’ve been preparing for just such an occasion as this is… prepared.  Wonderful!  We heard last week that this is a reflection of how God has welcomed us home in the person of his Son. 

And we love a good redemption story, don’t we?  Let’s all celebrate! 

Of course, there is the matter of the older brother.  Of course, the first line in the story is, “There was a man who had two sons.”  Despite this, as we said last week, we often call this story “The Prodigal Son.”  The older brother just cannot catch a break!  Helmut Thielecke titled his sermons on the sons “The Waiting Father,” which is better, I think.  For this second half of the story, I like “The Seeking Father.”  This story comes in a chapter; after all, that is all about seeking.  A shepherd seeks one lost sheep.  A woman seeks one lost coin.  A father goes out into the dark to seek his oldest son.

Who is outside of the party?  He has removed himself.  He’s at home, at least in terms of being on the property, but he’s outside of the celebration.  He’s away from the party, away from the joy.  If we think of the story of the younger son as a story of coming home, we might think of the story of the older brother as one of coming inside.  Just come inside.

There are some really tough things about this part of the story. The older son has removed himself from the party.  He’s away from the joy.  He’s in the dark.  The older brother is, for many of us long-time Christians, the one with whom we can more easily identify.  The sinning, the going wrong, the messing up of the elder son is much less obvious than the sin of his younger brother.  The younger brother left the house.  The younger brother, as much as said to his father, “I wish you were dead,” and acted as if his father were dead and forgot where his gifts came from and squandered them.  The younger brother forgot his identity.  Threw it away if you like.

The elder brother has also forgotten his identity.  It’s harder to see.  He’s never left his father’s house.  He’s been in this thing all his life.  He’s worked hard at it.  He’s been out in the fields.  He’s been doing all the things he’s supposed to be doing.  He’s actually coming in from work, from the field, when he asks, “What’s going on?”  The answer comes, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.”  Then he became angry and refused to go in.

It's not difficult to understand this anger, this resentment.  Why is this other person getting all this recognition?  Even the name that this parable’s been called by leaves out the older son!  What is going on here exactly?

The older son is seeing his father not as someone who loves him unconditionally but as an overseer.  A demand-maker.  As a task-master.  The older son is not seeing himself as a beloved son but as a slave.  The older son is seeing his younger brother not as a brother but as “the other.”  Look at what he tells his father – “Listen!  For all these years, I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends.  But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!”

This is a little bit tragic.  The older son has never left home, but he’s lost nonetheless.  The older brother is lost.   He’s in the equivalent of a far country.  He’s in the dark, outside of the celebration, outside of the party.  We get it though, don’t we?  In the far country, in the dark, love is transactional.  How easy is it for us to ask of God, “What’s in this for me?  I’ve been a faithful servant, after all!”  How easy is it for us to consider God like a boss who owes us something for all we do or all we’ve done? The older son is lost, too; it’s just not so obvious.  He’s lost in judgment and bitterness and jealousy and resentment.  It’s a dangerous thing for us.  You can be sure that those who are coming home from the far country will pick up on these things, no matter how we might try to hide them.  It’s not good for us either.  Helmut Thielecke has this to say in his take on this parable – “What a wretched thing it is to call oneself a Christian and yet be a stranger and grumbling servant in the father’s house.”

For the older son, obedience to God and duty to God are not a result of loving gratitude for what God has done, is doing and will do.  For the older son, obedience to God and duty to God are not born of love.  Obedience to God and duty to God have become burdens.  Service to God has become slavery.  Freedom in the household of God has become drudgery.

The older son has forgotten his identity.  He sees himself as one who is slaving away for his father.  In the older son’s eyes, his relationship to his father is contractual.  Turning toward his father listening to his father’s voice, has become a burden.  In the older son’s eyes, the relationship that he has with his father is one in which you get what you deserve. “Surely I deserve much more than what’s been given to your wayward son!  That’s the way the world works, after all.”  It’s an attitude about God that says we get what we deserve.  It’s an attitude about God that says God loves us as much as we deserve to be loved.  We have no problem extending such a belief out into the world and saying, “I will extend only the love/respect/care/kindness/compassion that people deserve!”  And no more.

What does this look like for us?  What has this looked like for us?  It’s like being envious of someone’s conversion story, feeling badly that ours is not really so dramatic.  Have you ever done that?  I have.  Feeling like our life story is somehow worth less in God’s eyes and/or in people’s eyes.  It’s like feeling that reading God’s word, or coming to God on our knees, or gathering together in praise and prayer and around the table and around the Word is a burden.  It’s like the feeling we have when we wonder (and not merely wonder but complain and resent) that other people don’t seem to be doing as much as we are, working out in the field day after day.

The day-after-day aspect of our being at home has led it to seem like an everyday drudgery, and if someone asked us how it’s going with us and God, we might say something like, “Same stuff, different day.”  We take God’s love for granted.  It becomes old hat.  We take the miracle of forgiveness for granted.  We forget that we are living every day in the face of a miracle.  The miracle of God’s love and mercy toward us.  We have forgotten our first love.  We have forgotten the joy of our salvation, the joy that’s going on right now at the party while we’re standing out in the dark, full of anger and resentment.

We’ve forgotten who we are.  We’ve forgotten who our Father is.  We’ve forgotten who our brothers and sisters are.  We are not forgotten, though.  Again, the 15^th chapter of Luke is all about seeking.  A shepherd with a sheep.  A woman with a coin.  A father is going out to seek this son just like he ran out on the road to greet his returning son.  There’s no recrimination.  There’s no “Who do you think you are to be acting like this?”  There’s no coercion.  There’s no “Get in here now!” There is only a reminder and a welcome-in.  “Son”.   The word here for “son” denotes “child”.  “Child, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.  But we had to celebrate and rejoice because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”  God’s love for us is without condition, without alteration.  It’s the kind of love that Shakespeare wrote about – “love does not alter where it alteration finds… it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken…”  It’s a love that encompasses every circumstance of life, from the wild-living younger brother to the angry and resentful dutiful brother.  One writer has put it like this – “There you have the infinite goodness of the Father.  When to men (and women) the conversion of the lost appears to be only a cheap capitulation, he sees in it the blessed homecoming of an unhappy soul.  And when to men (and women) the faithfulness of the elder brother seems nothing more than dull…respectability, he sees in it the dependability of a heart surrendered to him. (“You’re always with me, and all I have is yours”)  How broad is the love of the Father?  It spans the whole scale of human possibilities.  And the wonder of it is that even you and I, with all our peculiarities, have a place in that heart and are safe there!”

We have a home in that heart and are safe there in Christ.  Think of the wonder of this.  Let us not lose the wonder of this wonderful truth that we have a home in that heart and are safe there. 

How do we mitigate taking this wonderful truth for granted or getting used to is?  What part do we have to play?  Rest in that truth first of all.  Hear those words addressed to you this morning.  Hear those words addressed to you every day – “Child, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.”

Let us be reminded of our identity in Christ and know that our worth is found not in being compared to others (favourably or unfavourably) but in the truth that God loves us with a love that does not alter. 

And let us be thankful.  It’s hard for resentment to co-exist with thankfulness.  Let us be thankful to God every day that we can even come before God with our prayers.  Let us be thankful that we have an opportunity to hear God in God’s word.  Let us be thankful for all the gifts that God gives us, starting with the gift of a new day every day.

Let us be thankful to God for love and mercy.  Let the wonder of forgiveness never seem ordinary.  Let us ask God to create in us hearts that are in tune with his so that we may share in joys and celebrations and parties when that which was lost is found.  Let us never stop giving thanks for being found.

There is a homecoming because we have a home to come to.  There is a coming in from the dark to join in a joyous celebration because God comes out to seek us.  We’re going to sing about being part of a family now – not being a slave to our fear or doubts about not being enough but being a child celebrating and being thankful for the love that is extended to us.  May we be thankful, children of God, in tune with our Father’s heart.

Amen

This morning we’re looking at a story about homecoming. It’s a story that is in the end about rejoicing and celebrating.  Let us look at the story of the younger brother and the waiting father this morning and hear what God has to say to our hearts.

Traditionally this story has been known as “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”.  Prodigal means simply “free spending”.  We can see from the first line, however, that the story is about more than one son.  “There was a man who had two sons…”  This is Jesus’ opening line.  We’re going to, therefore, spend two weeks – one week with each son.  Different titles have been proposed for this passage.  “The Man and His Two Sons” – a little bland.  “The Father and His Two Lost Boys.”  Better.  “The Dysfunctional Family” if we want to get into the realm of psychology.  “Unhappy Families Are All Alike” if we want to get into the realm of Russian literature. The title of Helmut Thielecke’s sermons on this parable is “The Waiting Father”.  The one character that is in each part of this story.  You may say “Well the father’s not in the part when the younger son’s in the far country” but he’s certainly in the background at the very least.  I like “The Prodigal God.”  God loves freely and lavishly.  The heart of the first part of this story is a coming home to this waiting father.  Someone who had been lost is now found.

Of course, before we have a homecoming we need to have a home-leaving.  I won’t dwell a lot on the circumstances.  There are two sons.  The youngest son demands his inheritance.  This is unheard of.  This was not simply a young person leaving home to make their way in the world as we know it.  To spread their wings, experience new things.  In the culture of Jesus’ day, sons stayed with their families to look after parents as they aged.  Families with land stayed together on that land. To ask for an inheritance was in essence saying “I wish you were dead.”  The fact that the younger son left with money meant that the land would have been sold.  A significant part of the family estate gone.  Shame. The usual response from a father to such a request might have been a beating at best a beating at worst kicking the son out.  However, the son’s request is granted.   He leaves home.

And I want us to think about home for a few moments.  What are your best memories of home?  What does it mean to you to be at home?  What are your best thoughts of home – wherever that may be for you?  I’ve described home as the place where you are loved unconditionally.  The place where you are cared for.   The place where you are accepted.  The place where you are understood.  The place in which your identity as a beloved member of the household is affirmed and upheld. 

Where we are loved.  Where we belong.  We belong at home.  The thing about God’s love for us is that’s never coercive.  There’s no attempt on the part of the father to keep his son back.  Is there grief on the father’s part?  Undoubtedly.  Is there humility?  Of course.  Humility makes up part of God’s nature.  Humility is not just something Jesus put on for a while.  God is humble enough to allow us to reject him.  It hurts to be rejected. 

The son is saying “I don’t need you.”  And so he leaves.

On a macro level, we’re talking about the state of humanity.  The state of humanity that said to God “We don’t need you.” “We want to go our own way.”  The great myth of our own self-sufficiency.  The same old story that is as old as the Garden of Eden.  We don’t want to feel restricted.  We believe that having the freedom to do what we want is freedom. 

This is the lie.  That being able to do what we want is freeing.  You may identify with the younger son in the whole dissolute living thing.  Riotous living as the KJV has it.  I am personally not unfamiliar with riotous living.  Prodigal living.  Meaning free spending.  Spending freely and forgetting from whom your gifts have come.

The father is always in the background of this story at the very least.  The gifts that the younger son is squandering have been given by the father.  This is what has been forgotten. All that we are, all that we have is from God.  It’s not just the giver of the gifts that has been forgotten by this younger son, but the son’s very identity.  This is something that applies to each and every one of us.  You may not identify with the prodigal-ness of the younger son.  You may say “Well I’ve never really gone off the rails and I’ve always kept close to the father’s house.”  The thing that we may forget though - no matter where we are in terms of following Christ and no matter what we have done or not done or are doing or not doing – is our identity as children of the Father.   Our identity as the offspring of God in whom we live and move and have our being.  Our identity as beloved children made in the image of our loving God.

There is an inherent dignity and honour inherent in that identity.  In Christ, we are called to live into this identity and live it out.

It's easy to forget this, because the thing about the far country is, love is conditional.  Love is conditional in the far country.  Love is transactional in the far country.  If the younger son had friends around him, they were his friends as long as the money lasted.  We love you if you’re young if you’re rich, if you’re accomplished, if you’re good-looking, if you’re productive, if you’re fill-in-the-blank-yourselves. 

In his book, Henry Nouwen talks about these voices that we hear swirling all around us constantly – “Almost from the moment I had ears to hear, I heard those voices, and they have stayed with me ever since.  They have come to me through my parents, my friends, my teachers, and my colleagues, but, most of all, they have come and still come through the mass media that surround me.  And they say: ‘Show me that you are a good boy.  You had better be better than your friend!  How are your grades?  Be sure you can make it through school! I sure hope you are going to make it on your own!  What are your connections?  Are you sure you want to be friends with those people?  Those trophies certainly show how good a player you were!  Don’t show your weakness, you’ll be used!  Have you made all the arrangements for your old age?  When you stop being productive, people lose interest in you!  When you are dead, you are dead!”

Did you know that there is a fate worse than death?  As the father’s words at his son’s homecoming signify, there is a fate worse than death.  Being lost.  “So he went and hired himself throughout that country, and he began to be in need.  So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs.  He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything.” He had no one to help him.  He had come to the limit of his own resources.  As someone would say to Jesus – “I have no one to help me.” 

At this point, the son remembers that he’s a citizen of another country.  He comes to himself.  He remembers his father.  “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare…”  He remembers his identity as a child of the father.  A beloved child.

I always like to ask the question Bible-trivia style “What is the first thing that God says about Jesus?”  At Jesus’s baptism as he’s coming up out of the water a voice is heard saying – “This is my beloved son.”  This is my son, the beloved.  If I were to take away only one thing this morning, let it be that.  You are a beloved child of God. 

In his book “The Return of the Prodigal”, Henry Nouwen writes at length about Rembrandt’s late painting of the homecoming in this story.  He describes how the traditional marks of identity have been taken from the son.  Clothes.  The younger son is wearing nothing but an undergarment – contrasted with the robes his father has on.  Our hair is often a mark of our identity.  His head is shaved.  A mark of our identity.  One of his sandals has come off. 

The thing is though, he’s still wearing his sword.  He has carried a spark of that divinely given identity with him the whole time, even when he was in the direst of needs.

There’s still a sense on the part of the younger son that he needs to satisfy a condition to come home.  You’ve heard the story.  The son prepares a speech.  I’ll hope to satisfy your anger with me for rejecting your love, for squandering your gifts.  For thinking that I could do this thing on my own.  If I say the right words then maybe, just maybe we can make a deal.   I can live as a hired hand and retain a measure of autonomy; live on my own terms.  Hired hands can always quit after all. I’ll be allowed to live some sort of existence on the fringes of my father’s love at the very least.   

The very least becomes the most.  All summer we’ve been talking about the unexpected.  About turnarounds.  About mercy.  “So he set off and went to his father.  But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.”

The son has come home.  He was lost and now he’s found.  This is cause for rejoicing in the Kingdom of God.  A shepherd finds one lost sheep.  He invites his friends and they rejoice.  For one sheep?  Yes.   A woman finds a lost coin.  She calls together her friends and neighbours saying “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.”

This man has been found by God.  This woman has been found by God.  Can you say that with me this morning?  Then rejoice.  This turning for home, this repentance is not simply a turning away from something (and we like to focus on the something, particularly when it comes to others).  It’s a turning toward something.  It’s a returning – a return in the truest sense of the word.  This call to turn to Christ is a call to joy.  This call to turn to Christ is a call to recognize your worth in God’s eyes.  Claiming and living into our identity as beloved and forgiven children of the Father; because this is what we were made for.  This is what we were made for and the way has been opened.

Because we always must remember who’s telling this story.  The way.  The Way.  Turn toward him this morning and rejoice.  Turn toward him for the first time maybe, confessing your need for him.  Pray “Lord I need you” for the first time or the 10,001^st time and rejoice because you’ve come home – the place where you are accepted and safe and valued and loved without condition and without any “ifs”.  The way has been opened you see.  It’s been opened by the other person we see in the figure of the younger son in this story.  The Son who left his father’s home above, so free so infinite his grace, his compassion.  His suffering along with us.  The son who, in his dying and death and being raised to life and ascended, returned to his Father’s home amid much rejoicing.  We await his return and that day when we will sit around that banquet table.  In the meantime, we’re called to return home every day.  It’s not true that you can’t go home again.  You can go home again all right.  As someone has said – “There is a homecoming for us all because there is a home.”  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.

You know that any conversation you have me with might end up in a sermon (with all due discretion and checking with you first and so on).  The same kind of thing happened to me that night as our conversation turned into a talking point in the MP’s speech.  She got up to speak, and said that she had met the night’s “resident pastor” who had talked to her about the importance of balance in our lives, and had then “admitted that he had none in his.”  Not what I said at all!  However, the point was well made.

I often say that one of the biggest pastoral care concerns of our day and place is pace of life.  By pastoral care concerns, I simply mean problems or issues of our lives.  Everyone is going 100mph all the time, is how I like to put it.  Many of us are rushing from one thing to the next.  We will talk to many people at the end of the summer who will say that it felt too short, or that they need a vacation from their vacation.  We tend to be in a rush.  I remember starting a book called Crazy Busy some years ago.  Ironically I was too busy to finish it!  It began with the author talking about being in a rental cottage which had a rotary phone, and how impatient he became waiting for the dial to turn.  We fill up almost every moment of our day with input.  We have no time for useful idleness or simply pausing to consider things.  We started with screens everywhere and now of course most of us carry our own screens.  They’re compelling, aren’t they…

Now we don’t have time to discuss the reasons for all this busyness, but it could give us something to talk about.  Our need to control things.  Our belief that work is a virtue, the whole Protestant work ethic thing.  The disinclination or fear even to spend time alone with our thoughts.  I realize this intro is quite long and I’m not meaning to simply sound like a crank or offer a critique of society.  Perhaps it’s the way that we judge ourselves and ourselves by what we do or what we are doing rather than on who we are or who we are becoming.  How is it that we measure success?  Is it measured by what we do/what we accomplish? Is it measured by what we are learning?  Is success measured by how we are being transformed?  Who we are becoming?

Speaking of becoming, it is our call and desire in the Christ-following life to be formed into his very image by the power of the Holy Spirit in us.  We have Jesus here this morning in our text, offering a word.  A few words actually.  A voice that cuts through all the noise.   What is going on here this morning at church?  We’re being invited to heed this invitation and I’m thankful for the invitation, for the chance to accept it, and for being among people who have accepted it.

Here’s the invitation.  Listen.  “Listen.” (Mark 4:3)  Here it is again.  “Let anyone with ears to hear listen.” (Mark 4:9)

Here it is one more time.  “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” (Mark 4:23)  And then this – “Pay attention to what you hear.” (Mark 4:23)  Let’s pray to God to help us listen.

This is straight-up good news this morning.  I’ve already gone over the bad news.  Those of us who are feeling tired this morning know what I’m talking about.  We need to slow down.  We need to stop, don’t we?  Wouldn’t that be welcome news for you this morning?  So let us stop.

And listen to the man who’s just spent some time talking about seeds and how they fall on different soil.  He talked about understanding what the Kingdom of God is about.  He talked about lamps not being meant to be hidden under baskets or under beds.  He talked about the purpose of a lamp being to shed light.  To shed light upon the situation.

What does it mean to live in the light of the reign or kingdom of God?  This is really what we’re looking at all summer as we hear Jesus speak in parables.  They’re not so much about meaning to be grasped as challenges to how we see God, ourselves, those around us, those we encounter as we go through our days.  We’re invited to see with kingdom eyes what life in the kingdom of God is like. We’re invited to dreaming of what the world might look like in the light of the Kingdom of God.  Dreaming of what that might mean for us here at Blythwood in this small corner of the Kingdom for us as daughters and sons of the King, for that is what we are. 

And so we’re invited to listen.  An encouraging sort of “listen.”  “Listen” can precede bad news, I know.  This is a strictly good-news “Listen.”  Jesus is talking about good news and he’s using things from everyday life.  Seeds. One might think city people don’t know from seeds, but we get it.  We have our backyard gardens.  We have our balcony plants.  We have our planters on our front porches.  I like to check the progress of flowers in our planter; check the progress of the tomatoes in the backyard; make sure we’re keeping things watered when it wasn’t raining very much.   We know from seeds and plants and the way things grow.  We get it.

So here’s the good news.  We can stop. Consider how things grow.  We can rest.   Consider how things grow.  We can cease from doing all the time.  We can cease from trying to make every moment productive or fill every moment with empty input.  Because “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.” He does not know how.  He knows it’s not up to him though.  He’s done his part.  He can sleep.  He rises too, mind you!  But he can sleep.  If you feel you need to sleep right now I won’t mind!

I want us to take this in.  We cannot miss this in a world that tells us that we must be striving all the time and where “Busy” has become the new “Fine” in response to how are you and the phrase “Crazy busy” is a thing.  These words of Jesus are telling us that that is just crazy.  They’re a reminder that work in and of itself is not a virtue.  We’re to work purposefully of course, but we’re not to make work our purpose.

Not even Kingdom work.  It’s not simply about what we do but who we are.  Of course, we’re called to do things.  God puts things in front of us to do.  In Mark 2 Jesus had a lot of healing to do at Simon’s house.  The whole city was gathered around the door.  In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went to a deserted place, and there he prayed.

Jesus remembered who he was.  The beloved son.   If there was anyone ever in the history of the world who might have had an excuse for “doing” all the time, it was surely Jesus of Nazareth.  So many people to heal.  So many people to whom to announce the Good News.  To preach in the streets of the great cities of the empire like Ephesus, Corinth, Rome itself.  To make friends with rulers.  Influence the influencers.  Get in touch with people of power and influence.  Doesn’t this make more sense?  Instead, Jesus’ motto seemed to be more “I’ve got friends in low places”.  Things are turned upside down in the Kingdom.  Jesus had things to do with the people who were in front of him – lepers, tax collectors, the poor, the labourer, the outcast.  God has things for us to do for sure.  Someone has said, “Work as if everything depended on you and pray as if everything depended on God.”  I would add to this “Rest as if the Kingdom of God were like someone who would scatter seed on the ground, and who would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”  Seeds can take a while to grow.  The growth might be so slow it’s imperceptible.  I’ve talked before about going to Horizons For Youth to help with brunch on a Saturday for a few years, sometimes wondering what the use was.  Until one Saturday morning, I had a 45-minute conversation with a young man there about faith and God and what it all meant to us.  The Holy Spirit was doing something there.  I don’t know how.  It might look like a year’s long relationship in which you are asking God every day to help you be a light for him in your words and in your actions.  One day seemingly out of the blue there is an openness to hearing about what or who it is in your life that causes you to be the way you are. Who is it in your life that enables you to be way you are?  We always need to remember who’s telling the parable.  The one who communed with his Father.  The one who told his followers “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”   Isn’t this a welcome invitation to you this morning?   Wouldn’t this be a welcome invitation every day?  So that we’re not merely parcelling out vacation time to come away and rest awhile (if we’re even doing that – and not that there’s anything wrong with that!) but that we make it part of our daily routine?

In order to do this, we must practice of course.  Like anything we want to learn, practice is key.  The next time we have a moment of idleness, a moment of waiting, a moment of being in-between things before we reach for our phone, we could try something like this.  This comes from Helmut Thielecke’s sermon on this parable and I think it’s good.  We’ve printed out cards with this on it which you can use until you have it memorized.  If you’re from a non-Baptist faith tradition you may already know it.  Use it to come before God in praise.  Use it to commune with our King as a child of the Kingdom. 

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen”

Think about these things as we do this.  Glory be to him who has brought me to this moment in my day…The Son is none other than Jesus Christ, who died for me.  Let the one thing needful be constantly present in my mind, resting in his presence.  Doesn’t this resting put the relative importance (or self-importance) of the many things I do in perspective? Glory be to the Holy Spirit…(may I) ever more be learning to hold still in order that the wholly Other may fill me with his Spirit and give me a sense of the true priorities in my life.  As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.  Looking back.  Looking around us.  Looking ahead of us.  Here we are embraced by the everlasting arms of God’s love, covered with a canopy of faithfulness we can trust, founded upon a sure and firm foundation of hope which the uncertainties that fill our days could never provide.

We can rest.  Martin Luther once said, “While I drink my little glass of Wittenberg beer the gospel runs its course.”  Someone said that this is the finest and most comforting thing he’d heard said about beer! Luther didn’t think he needed to be constantly striving.  The Psalmist put it like this – “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives sleep to his beloved.” Listen.  Let those who have ears to hear, hear.  May God grant us all daily the rest that He wants for us.  May this be true for us all.

Let me say at the outset that I think that the worst thing that could happen here this morning would be for us to leave here missing something fundamental about this parable.  To go away from here thinking, “Thank God I am not like that Pharisee!”  The worst thing that could happen would be for us to miss seeing ourselves in this parable. Let us not miss seeing ourselves as we consider the picture that Jesus draws of these two men in the temple.

Let us not look at these two men stereotypically. I don’t believe that Jesus is merely dealing in stereotypes here.  It doesn’t strike me as something Jesus would do.  He always saw the person, didn’t he?  Now the very word “Pharisaic” has come to mean something in our language.  It’s used to describe a religious person who is smug or judgemental in their actions, particularly if their actions prove that they are much less holy than they pretend to be.  Someone who is self-righteous.

What we mustn’t ever do is look to what Jesus said about Pharisees of his day and think, “Oh yes, they must have been terrible!”  The words that Jesus spoke to the Pharisees serve as warnings to us today.  At one point, he talked about being white-washed tombs – looking so good on the outside and dead on the inside.  He didn’t say these things so we could be here 2,000 years later going, “Tut tut!”  I don’t think Jesus would have been one to stereotype, and I don’t think that this story is meant to be representative of pharisaical thought or belief of the day any more than I think that the tax collector here is representative of tax collectors of the day.

A few words about both groups before we begin.  Pharisees were a group of people who wanted to figure out what it meant to live out the Torah in their context.  Sounds reasonable, yes?  The Torah was how the nation of Israel connected to God, how they knew God.  Pharisees wanted to figure out how the Torah touched every aspect of life.  They were serious about connecting with God.  They were out on the streets.  This is why Jesus was continually encountering them.  We might even call them missional today.  They observed the rules.  They gave away money.  They fasted.  This all meant something to them.  They were serious.  They were respected.  It’s like the person who is a lifelong church member attends services, gives faithfully.  Prays.  Serves. 

Further away, we have the tax collector.  He’s further away because he’s not allowed to stand within the inner part of the temple.  A collaborator with the occupying Roman forces.   A traitor.  One who is known for trying to get everything he can for himself.  One who is known for fleecing his own people.  An outcast.  Often ex-slaves or people without homes or land see no alternative to make a living.  Which makes me think that we always need to stop and consider circumstances which have left people where they are before we go about deciding how distasteful it is.

We’re invited to see ourselves in these characters.  It’s not simply a matter of seeing this story in terms of black and white, good and bad.  Life’s never that simple.  How many of us have been in the position of thinking, “God is lucky to have me on his side?”  or “I’m doing really well in this!”  How many of us have been in the position where we say, “I’ve done something so bad or so vile there’s no coming back from this?” 

To help us, let’s look at the parallels between the two men.    They are both seeking God where God may be found – the temple.  They’re both serious about their seeking.  They are both coming to God in prayer.  Sin – going wrong or going sideways - can creep into the middle of a lot of piety.  The Pharisee is thanking God, and this is a good thing.  There is nothing wrong with thanking God for the work that God has done in our lives, in our hearts.  The problem with the Pharisee’s prayer is that it is directed at himself.  It’s about himself.  He says “I” five times!  He’s making claims about his own goodness.  Look at all the things I do!  There is a problem when we come before God with claims of our own – our own goodness, our own superiority, our own whatever.  It might make us feel that God owes us something.  It might lead to comparing ourselves to others with more or less to claim before God.  The Pharisee’s posture is upward (and there’s nothing wrong with such a prayer posture), but the Pharisee is praying sideways.  He is doing what humans have been doing since time immemorial.  We do it individually.  We do it based on ethnicity/economics/gender.  We love to do it online in a world where we say we’re beyond judgement and watch reels of people behaving deplorably and commenting about how deplorable they are And this is how sin creeps into the most spiritual of conversations between us and God.  The Pharisee starts off very well “God, I thank you that I am…”   God, I thank you that you have made me more loving, more generous, more merciful, more you fill in the blank.  “I thank you that you have done this, God.”  Instead of casting his gaze upwards, the Pharisee casts his gaze sideways.  I thank you that I am not like other people.  Those people.  You know what I’m talking about.  This is the language that we use.  “I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.”  Luckily there’s someone nearby to serve as an object lesson while the Pharisee tells God what’s going on.  I am not like them. 

The Pharisee is measuring himself by this sideways.  It’s what we do.  We like to compare ourselves favourably to others.  It makes us feel better about ourselves.  The whole celebrity gossip industry is built on this premise, right?  They’re just like us!  Or even better, they’re worse than us.  Look at how bad these celebs look on the beach or read about the latest affair or breakup scandal or custody battle or Twitter war etc. etc. etc.  It makes us feel better about ourselves.  It can even creep into our relationship with God, into our piety, and we start to think, “God’s really lucky to have me when I look down at these other people.  I’m doing pretty well in this thing compared to them.” 

I want to pause here and consider a question.  What claim do I have to make before God?  What claim will I have to make when I stand before God one day?  Claims on my own goodness?  Really?  I know myself.  If we take an honest look at ourselves, we have no doubt as to why Jesus said, “There is no one good but God.”  Claims on my own goodness that would cause me to say, “You owe me God – look what I did for you” or “Well, at least I wasn’t as bad as…”

I have no claim to make before God.  The only thing I have to do before God is throw myself on his grace, his unmerited good, his undeserved favour held out to me in the outstretched hands of his son.  What else could I do but pray down, beat my chest and pray, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

On the other side, we have this rogue tax collector.  Expectations are turned upside down in this parable.  It would be something akin to saying a church deacon stood and prayed, “Thank you, God, that I am not like them.”   A little ways off, a sex worker would not even look up to heaven but was beating his chest and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”  This is how shocking this story was.  This is not primarily a parable about how to pray, but it does teach us how to pray, and we’ll come back to this in a few minutes.  This is the parable of God’s mercy.  It’s a parable that reminds us not to rush to judgement.  We can’t claim to know anyone’s heart.  We can’t claim to know anyone’s standing before God.  We can’t claim to know the circumstances of people’s lives.”  As one writer puts it, “We live between the future judgements we make now and the surprises which the last judgement will bring.”

What are we to do in the face of this? 

Look up. 

This is what the tax collector is doing - figuratively speaking, as he didn’t even feel worthy to look up literally.  I mean looking up and comparing ourselves to the matchless holiness of God.  Crying out, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”   Knowing by faith that when we do so, we are receiving God’s welcome.  Knowing this is not a cry of despair or wallowing in our inability to do the good we know we ought to do, but knowing that this cry is met with the words “Welcome my beloved child.”  This is what God does.  God has mercy.  We’re not to come before God comparing ourselves to anyone, not looking around us but looking only to God.  The tax collector is not focused on how great he is doing at this whole God thing but rather on his need for God’s mercy.  The tax collector doesn’t pray, “Have mercy on me, but at least I’m not as bad as that self-righteous Pharisee over there.”  He mustn’t leave the temple and go back to money-extorting ways. To truly experience God’s mercy is to be willing to extend it to others.  In order to be instruments of God’s mercy, we need to be coming to God often and meaningfully and asking for mercy. 

This is a really good thing to pray every day.  Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.  Listen to how David prayed in Psalm 51:

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.  Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.  Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.”

When we pray this prayer, we’re being reminded that the source of our goodness, the source of our righteousness, the very ability we have to come before God in prayer in the first place, is from outside ourselves.  It’s a reminder that we’re called to extend the same mercy to others and not to stand in self-righteous judgement over them.  This is the thing about prayer that this parable teaches us.  Someone put it like this – “Prayer consists not in our telling God how things are but in allowing God to communicate to us the divine vision of life and reality.”  For Luke, it’s the great reversal.  Those who exalt themselves will be humbled.  Those who humble themselves will be exalted.  There is a warm welcome extended to those who recognize their need for something beyond themselves.  For those who wish to condemn, there is not.  One of these men went home justified, Jesus tells us.  The unspoken question here is, which of these figures are we going to be?  May God give us an ever-increasing awareness of our daily need for His mercy, a thankfulness for it, and a willingness to extend it to others.  May these things be true for each and every one of us.  Amen     

When I heard this, I could not help but think, “I wish that young girl would have asked something like, “How have grandpa and grandma created a life together or stayed together so long?” or something along those lines.  This is not to say that this question has never been asked by this young girl, and I hope it has (or will be).

Our parable today is told as a result of a question that is asked.  It’s really the wrong question.  Let us not be too hard on Peter, though.  Let us extend to Peter's grace.  This parable is at heart about judgement and grace.  The judgement falls on those who are unwilling to accept God’s generous grace.  “All is grace,” as someone has said and titled a book.  All is grace.  We’re looking at the scandal of grace here in our story this morning.  We’re looking at the impossible possibility of grace. “Amazing,” we might even say.

Let us pause and consider grace together.  It’s the thing that will save the world, and it’s the thing that the world won’t buy.  Someone has said this – “An eye for an eye won’t work because all it does is double the number of eyeless people.  Retribution won’t take evil out of the world, it will simply perpetuate it in spades.  A judgement that works only by punishing sinners and rewarding the righteous produces all hell and no kingdom: there are just too many sinners, and there are no righteous.  The only thing that’s going to get evil out of the world is for him (Jesus) to take it into himself on the cross – to drop it down the black hole of his death – and to make a new creation by the power of his resurrection.” Because with God, all things are possible, even the impossibility possibility of grace.  This word that can become so overused or sanitized we lose its meaning.  Undeserved favour.  Unmerited goodness.  A gift which can never be repaid, and it doesn’t have to be.  Someone has said a good sleep is grace.  Good dreams are grace.  The smell of freshly cut grass is grace.  Being loved is grace.  Loving someone is grace.

But scandalous?  Well, yes, sure.  In a world where we like to think that everyone gets what they deserve (or should anyway).  In a world in which we believe what goes around comes around.  In a world where the operative question is, “What’s in this for me?”  Peter asks, “What’s in this for us?”  A rich young man has just gone away from Jesus when he was instructed that to be perfect, he should sell what he possessed and give the money to the poor.  Jesus continues to surprise, and may he continue to surprise us too.  We might have expected him to say something like “Believe in me” or “Follow me” after all.  All this talk of perfection and selling things leads Peter to blurt out, “Look, we have left everything and followed you, What then shall we have?”

As I said earlier, let’s not be too hard on Peter.  Let us not forget the first part that precedes his question.  We have left everything and followed you.  We may not understand it all, Lord, but we’re with you.  We may not get it, and we fail, but we’re following you, and we know you’re with us.  We’re all coming to grips with this grace thing, after all.  To be a disciple of Christ is to be a student – it’s right there in the name.  The point of any study or apprenticeship is to learn things we don’t yet know.  None of us have come to a full understanding of this grace thing.  So we say to Jesus, “Tell me about grace…”  Tell us about the kingdom in which many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.  What does that look like?  What does grace look like?

For the kingdom of heaven is like…  This parable, by the way, is not about what God considers to be fair labour practices.  This parable is not about being humble or letting someone cut in front of us in a line.  Jesus tells a story about the labour market, a labour contract, the employed, the unemployed, rates of pay – all very current.  Let me retell the story in a current way:

Wayne Gretzky is overseeing his winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake.  He’s waiting for a good time to harvest the icewine crop (best harvested when it is between -12 and -15 degrees).  One Sunday, the weather forecast is predicting such temperatures for the next two days.  The next day (Monday), early in the morning, he goes to the local community centre in Virgil in order to hire day workers who gather there to look for such work.  They agree that $20/hour will be a fair wage for the work they are doing and that the workday will go from 6 am to 6 pm.  Twelve hours so $240 each.  Just before 9 am, Gretzky is informed that the forecast has changed.  The projected cold snap is now only expected to last the day.  He goes back to the community centre at 9 am looking for more workers, assuring them they will be paid whatever is right.  He does the same thing at noon and the same thing at three o’clock.  Come help with the harvest, and you will be paid whatever is right! 

Finally, he goes out at 5 pm.  Only an hour left in the work day.  Who is left?  Those who couldn’t get out earlier.  They might have been sleeping it off.  The unindustrious?  The unemployable?  Those with criminal records?  We can imagine.  Who’s still looking for work at 5 pm?  Those who are close to giving up?  “No one has hired us,” they say.  “Come on into my vineyard,” says Wayne.  Soon it’s time for the cheques to be handed out.  “Make sure the last workers we hired get paid first,” says Wayne to his manager.  When the first cheque gets opened by what many would consider an unsavoury-looking character - $240!  He starts to walk off, and his friend catches up with him.  “You got $240 too?!”  Word starts to spread as it often does in these situations.  We knew Wayne was fair and generous, but this might be crazy!  Has the hourly wage actually been bumped up to 240/hr?    This would mean $2,880 for those who worked from 6 am.  Even if it’s not that much, it must be something more.  A bonus for having been there all day at least surely!  When they receive the previously agreed upon daily wage, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, “These last  worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the freezing cold.”

“Listen pal/buster (this is the sense of the word “friend” that Jesus uses here), I am doing you no wrong.  Take what belongs to you and go (go enjoy yourself with a free glass of chardonnay in the tasting room!).  I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.  Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?”

Or are you envious because I am generous?  This is really the operative question here.  Is my eye jealous because God is generous?  Am I coming to see everything more and more in the light of God’s grace?  Grace is not about keeping a ledger of our rights and wrongs so that we can earn something from God and look down on those whose ledgers don’t measure up to ours.  The kingdom of heaven is not a business transaction.  The kingdom of heaven is not a quid pro quo.  The kingdom of heaven is not about bookkeeping (though we’re thankful for bookkeepers and the work they do and the red and black ink they use).   There’s no being in the red or the black in the kingdom of heaven when it comes to grace.  All is seen in the light of God’s grace that makes those colours indistinguishable.  Someone has said that grace works by raising the dead, not rewarding the rewardable.  Because Christ is risen.  Christ has been raised.  New life in the risen Christ is a gift.  All is gift.  All is grace.

Do we begrudge the generosity that God shows to others – generosity that we feel they have no claim on?  None of us in and of ourselves have a claim on God’s grace.  Are we asking in any measure, “What will we get out of all this?”  Do we recognize that to be in Christ is to be in the vineyard?  To be in the vineyard means to be in communion with and in fellowship with our loving God.  We know this in part now, and one day we will know it fully.  To be in the vineyard, to be saved, to be delivered, to be in Christ, is not a means to an end.  It’s not a way to achieve a goal or profit for ourselves.  It IS the goal.  So if you’re in the vineyard, welcome home.  If you’re not, the invitation is before you.  Even if it’s 5 pm.  To be in the vineyard is grace.  To be in the vineyard is a gift.  To say, “We don’t understand everything, and we don’t have answers to all the questions we may have, but we’re with you,” is a gift.  To stand in such a position as a disciple of Jesus is to know life in all its fullness.  It’s to have put away the uncertainty, the fear, the rejection, the comparison, the competition that goes along with days spent in the community centre waiting and longing for something on which to stake our lives – something in which to find meaning; to find that in the vineyard we’ve already been found.  To find that the burden of the day is bearable because of the one who shares it with us. In the vineyard, in the owner’s care, we find that we’re able to bear the heat of the day.  If you’ve been in the vineyard for any significant length of time, you will have known this.  If you’re a more recent arrival, you will know it.  Listen to the promise found in these wonderful verses in Jeremiah – “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord.  They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought, it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.” (Jer 17:7-8) The drought can be hard, and the day can be hot.  Helmut Thielecke described it in this way:  “Anybody who has ever gone through something hard with Jesus holding his hand, anybody who has had him as the companion of his anguish… that person would not for all the world have missed these experiences. He does not say in any case, I have never yet heard anyone say, 'Because of all the hardships I have had to undergo, God must surely give me a higher place in heaven.' What he does say is this: 'Not until I went down into the depths of hunger, fear, and loneliness did I experience the nearness of the Lord. There is where I first learned who Jesus is and how he can save and comfort and sustain… For the rest of my life, I shall live by the blessings of those hours of 'burden and heat.'

Blessed are those whose trust is in the Lord.  Blessed are those who are co-workers in the vineyard with our Lord; who do not see service as drudgery or competition but as the unmerited gift of God.  Blessed are those who live in that grace and in so living know life.  May we never be disturbed by the wideness of God’s mercy and whom it may envelop, no matter how long we’ve known life in him.  The vital question here is, “Am I envious because He is generous?”  May our answer be based on our growing in grace.

God’s grace is so lavish that the distinctions we like to make between first and last are erased in the kingdom of heaven.  Our brother Dennis (who is now with our Lord) talked highly of Brennan Manning, an American author and ex-priest.  I’ve yet to read a lot of his work, but I hope to.  This is how he described the good news of grace in a book called The Ragamuffin Gospel:

“The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many… For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God. While there is much we may have earned—our degree, our salary, our home and garden, a Miller Lite, and a good night’s sleep—all this is possible only because we have been given so much: life itself, eyes to see and hands to touch, a mind to shape ideas, and a heart to beat with love. . . . My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ, and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.”

May each one of us live in and live into God’s grace.

Amen    

When we get to the 13th chapter of Matthew, we have heard the Sermon on the Mount (5-7) and Jesus’ talk on mission (10).  We have heard how Jesus had been moving around Galilee, healing and forgiving, announcing the Kingdom of Heaven in what he’s saying, what he’s doing.  We have heard about how many have rejected him.

This is the issue at hand.  There is a lot of unresponsiveness going on.  Jesus’ followers may have well wondered what kind of Kingdom this was exactly as they looked around.  They were a motley crew which included the poor, the dispossessed, the occupied, the labourer.  As Paul would put it in his letter to the church in Corinth – “…not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.”

The question was – “What kind of Kingdom is this?”  The question for those who would come after was – What kind of Kingdom is this?  The question for us today is – What kind of Kingdom is this?

What is going on here exactly?  We’re a few people gathered amongst tens of thousands who are living within a few square kilometres.  We live in a culture that is, at worst hostile and largely politely indifferent to this Kingdom in which we live and which we are called to proclaim in word and deed.

What do we do with this? Particularly when we like bigness and why not?  If something is big, it must be good, no?  If something is drawing a lot of attention, it must be worthwhile, no?  I’m not saying of course, that anything that is widely or wildly popular has no value.  It was the same thing in Jesus’ time, of course.  They liked bigness, they liked spectacle.  “Do something big” was what the tempter told Jesus.  Throw yourself down from the highest point of the temple and emerge unscathed.  Can you imagine the crowds and their reaction?  Then everyone will believe you!

We like big crowds.  I don’t mind a crowd.  We have a book at the back of the church that we’ve had for years, and thank you to the faithful people who fill it out each week with a report on the weather and the number of people who were here.  You know what?  I look at that book every week to see the number.

It’s good to know the number.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with a crowd, is there?  We’re not told to seek numbers, however.  We’re told to seek something else first.  It can, however, be really hard to walk by faith. Helmut Thielicke was a German theologian and pastor of the 20th century.  His book on parables is called The Waiting Father, has informed a lot of my thinking of them.  Educated in the best German theological tradition, he became a pastor in his homeland in the 1930s.  He writes of his beginnings as a pastor like this – “When I became a pastor and conducted my first Bible-study hour, I went into it with the determination to trust in Jesus’ saying: ‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.’ I said these words in order to assure myself that even Hitler, who was then in the saddle, and his dreadful power machine were merely puppets hanging by strings in the hands of this mighty Lord.  And in this Bible-study hour, I was faced with two very old ladies and a still older organist.  He was a very worthy man, but his fingers were palsied, and this was embarrassingly apparent in his playing.  So this was the extent of the accomplishment of this Lord, to whom all power in heaven and earth had been given, supposedly given.  And outside marched the battalions of youth who were subject to altogether different lords.”

What do we do when things are not working out the way we expected?  We turn to the promises.  We ask the question, what exactly is this Kingdom supposed to be like? And so he put before them another parable.  The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field.  Now Jesus could have used any one of a number of plants here.  If we wanted something stately, he could have used the cedars of Lebanon – THE tree of the time and place.  It would have been something close to saying the kingdom of heaven is like an acorn that grows into a mighty oak.

The mustard seed of Jesus’ day turned into a shrub.  In Mark’s telling of the parable, he leaves it as a shrub.  A plant of not much account.  Doesn’t even sound good.  Shrub.   Matthew talks up the plant somewhat by saying it’s the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree.  It’s not much of a tree, though.  Eight feet or so at its largest.  A wild shrub.  Not one you would grow in a garden, as they were known for taking over.

There’s no talk about taking over here, though.  There’s an element to this parable, I believe, which speaks to the growth of Jesus’ church beyond its beginnings.  I don’t think there’s a lot of triumphalism here, though as in “This thing is going to take over the world like a mighty tree.”  It’s an unusual plant for Jesus to choose.  It was considered unclean – not kosher – and so this story is taking us beyond the realm of what was thought possible.  Who would speak of such a thing, this shrub that grows from a mustard seed?  From whom could such growth, such transformation take place?

The answer is, of course, such growth can only come from the one who’s telling the parable…

We can lament our lack of sway in the public sphere.  The political sphere.  We can lament that the days are gone in which going to church on a Sunday was the thing to do (though was that ever really what this was all about – going to church because it was the accepted or done thing?) or the days that the church was the tallest building in town (and again I ask is that what it was really all about?).  Change in the kingdom is from God.  Salvation happens through what is to all outward appearances insignificant.  From a carpenter’s son from a village of no account in a Roman Empire backwater… comes deliverance.  One writer puts it like this – “How are we to understand this deliberate use by Jesus of the unclean and insignificant as images of the kingdom?  It suggests that God’s greatest works are not done on a grandiose level.  Not in cathedrals, big buildings, or large mausoleums.  Cathedrals can become museums rather than sources of inspiration for the Christian community.  The kingdom is in everyday life with its ups and downs and, above all, in its insignificance.  Such is where most people live their lives.”

I would change this somewhat, modify it to “seeming insignificance.”  Things of the kingdom, no matter where they are found, are surely the most significant things in the world. The kingdom is in everyday life, and truths of the kingdom are made known in our everyday lives.  Speaking of seeds, every day when I come home, I see the result of a lettuce seed.  Lettuce seeds are not that much bigger than mustard seeds.  Somehow one made its way into a crack in front of our mailbox.  A little red oak lettuce growing right in front of the mailbox.  The kingdom of heaven is like a lettuce seed.  One little tiny seed and it can change the whole character of a sandwich!

Speaking of the character of something being changed, the next parable tells of a woman baking bread.  The kingdom of heaven is like yeast.  It changes everything.  When it does, people are fed.  The kingdom of heaven is among us not simply for our own benefit but that the very nature of our environment (wherever we find ourselves) might be changed.  When the mustard seed comes to maturity as a shrub, the birds of the air find a nesting place in its branches.  It’s still “just” a shrub.  It was never about having the tallest building in town, though if that happened, ok.  I should say it was never about seeking to have the tallest building in town, or the most members, or the most programs, or the most…..whatever it is we want the most of because if you have the most, you must be best.

It was about seeking the kingdom first.  To what result?  So that rest might be found in its branches.  Psalm 104:12 goes like this “By the streams, the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches.”  The kingdom of heaven is this image coming to fruition.  Parable and poetry tell us what might be.  Parables reveal things in the everyday.  Parables like this one help us to see truths in our every day.  So that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.  The most everyday thing.

The kingdom of heaven is like a chaplain holding a worship service for 15 people in a corner of the nursing home in which they live.

The kingdom of heaven is like a woman delivering sandwiches to a place of shelter downtown.

The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who stopped on her way to work to mourn with her recently widowed neighbour and cry on the sidewalk with her.

The kingdom of heaven is like…

So that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

We’re talking about life.  Life that is really life.  The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds.  It turns into something else.  The Kingdom of Heaven is something we’re called to stake our whole lives on.  This was Jesus’ invitation when he called out, “Follow me.”  This is our invitation, and it’s before us every day.  What does it mean to stake our whole lives on this thing that’s like a seed?

It means at least partly – nurture the seed.  It is indeed God that brings growth.  It is God who brings change.  This change is, to begin with, each and every one of us.  As Jesus himself put it, the Kingdom of God is within/among you.  This seed.  This yeast.  The Kingdom of Heaven is like a woman baking bread – finding God in the everyday.  The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast which changed the whole loaf.

Let ourselves be changed, in other words.  Being in conversation with God daily – beginning our days with thanks and praise.  Talking to God.  Letting God speak to us through his word, because this thing is not just for once a week or once a month or twice a year.  Daily.  Simply.  Letting the seed that is the Kingdom grow in us.  Letting our entire lives be leavened by this Kingdom that is founded on self-giving love.  Thielicke put it like this – “…this real and simple thing consists in our doing nothing whatsoever except to let the Word of the Lord germinate, grow and flourish within us.  Or, to put it the other way around, simply that we grow into ever-deeper fellowship with Christ.”

So that people might find rest with us.  So that people may be fed.  To die to our own desire for spectacle, for bigness.  This is the thing about seeds, of course.  Paul told it to the Corinthians – “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.”  Jesus’ invitation is to die to ourselves – die to the myth of self-sufficiency, self-autonomy, self-will.  There is no way to make this message cool or attractional outside of this great truth – that in dying to ourselves, we find life.

What comes to life is something new – a shrub.  A loaf of bread.  The bread of Life.

Because in the end, we must remember who’s telling this parable.  The one who would die and return from the dead transformed into something imperishable.  Our living Christ.  The one whom we follow.  The one in whom we have found life.  The one who dares us to dream of what might be and enables these dreams to take root.  May these truths become ever more deeply implanted within us.

Amen

Why is this?  Is it because we do not want to be associated with tv preachers who want us to send them donations so that they can buy airplanes or celebrity pastors who purchase Manhattan apartments?  Do we leave talk of money with them?  Do we not do ourselves and our churches a disservice if we ignore it, in the same way, we do ourselves a disservice if we leave talk of healing to charlatans and con artists? Whose money is it anyway?  Jesus does not shy away from talking about money.  What we do with money affects us and those around us every day.  In the Jewish tradition in which Jesus lived, mammon was not inherently good or evil.  There was a neutrality to it, and many will point out that 1 Timothy 6:10 states that it is the love of money that is the root of all evil – not simply money.  What an easy thing to love, though.  What an easy thing to worship.  Do we call anything else “Almighty” other than the dollar?  The Almighty Dollar.  We, followers of Jesus, are not exempt from this, and it’s important to note here that Jesus is addressing his disciples.  Money may have a neutrality, but there is absolutely no neutrality when it comes to where we stand in our relationship to it.  Wealth may be used faithfully in service to something else (in our case, the Kingdom of God) in solidarity and on behalf of those who are in need, or it may take on a godlike status in which it becomes the thing that we serve.  The consequences of the rule of wealth are all around us.  Theft.  Graft.  Exploitation.  Murder.  Hoarding.   Conspicuous consumption.  “Stealth wealth” these days, and people want to copy it.  Disregard for people we consider low-status who are in need.

What is the thing that we ultimately value?  Do we live seeing money as something we use in service of, or do we live in service to it?  Usually, we’re a mixture of the two, aren’t we – and we thank God for grace and forgiveness and transformation.  We thank God for words such as these from Jesus that we hear today, which make us question our values.  We thank God for parables that fire our imaginations and help us live into a dream of who God might enable us to be in God’s kingdom.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we listen to Jesus’ words this morning.

The Parable of the Dishonest Manager is known as one of the more difficult of Jesus’ parables.  If we’re particularly delicate, we might think, “How could Jesus use a story about such an unscrupulous person?”  Some believe that the debt which the dishonest manager wiped off the books represented either interest that his boss charged or a cut that he himself had been skimming – so the cooking of the books was actually a righteous act.  You can think that if you want.  It’s not in the story, and I don’t think it really has much of an effect on how we are to view the story.  The star of the story is not the dishonest manager in any case.  You can guess who the star of the story is, as I’ve already said it about 27 times!  In any case, God has been known to use rather unscrupulous characters in God’s purpose.  Jesus has been known to tell a story about an unjust judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people.  In the city in which this judge lived, there was a widow who kept coming to him saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.”  The judge eventually gives in because he’s tired of hearing the woman pleading.”  This does not mean that God is like a judge who has no fear of God or regard for people (although God’s justice might not align with what we think of justice, so there is that).  The question is, “How much more?”  How much more will God, out of God’s eternal loving heart, help his children who call out to him?

How much more?  Remember this as the key to our understanding of what’s going on here.  What is going on here?  Our cast of characters includes a manager.  He’s in the employ of a rich man.  We hear of two debtors – business associates, really, as the amounts we’re talking about represent several years' wages.  Charges are brought against the manager.  He is summarily dismissed and asked to hand over the financial accounts.  The manager is torn.  If he does nothing, he’ll be forced to work or beg.  He can’t work, and he’s too proud to beg.  The other option is to use his boss’ money so that he will be welcomed into others’ homes.   The first debtor is told to make his debt of 100 jugs of olive oil 50 (making this debtor complicit in the scheme note – shrewd!).  The second debtor is told to make his debt of 100 containers of wheat 80.  Reductions in debt of 50% and 20%!  Who wouldn’t welcome that? 

“And his master commended the dishonest manager…”  Why?  In a world where you use money for personal gain, why wouldn’t the manager be commended?  It’s a kind of “Well played, sir” on the part of his ex-boss.  The manager has secured a future for himself.  The rich man won’t be able to seek any recompense.  It would make him look miserly.  As it is, the boss looks pretty good now.  He’s a big debt forgiver, and this can’t hurt future business.  Well played, well played!  Most shrewd!

What is the lesson here?  We said last week that parables aren’t simply analogies or moral tales.  Be unscrupulous in your business dealings!  Don’t feel badly about effectively bribing people in order to make things easier on yourself!  Others will applaud you!  This is not simply a “this is the moral of the story” tale, though it does have to do with our morals; it has to do with our values.  The question is, “How much more…?”  The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.  The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation.  The children of this age, whose god is money, are pretty single-minded in their pursuit of it.  The children of this age whose focus is turned in on themselves are pretty single-minded, buying/collecting/accumulating for their own good, aren’t they?

Children of light, how much more shrewd should we be with everything?  Not for the purpose of self-gain/self-reward/self-aggrandizement – but for the purposes of the kingdom of God.  This life of discipleship is an all-of-life call.  It’s not simply a call to give 10% of our earnings away, and it’s free-rein time with the other 90% (I earned it, after all!).  It’s an all-of-life call that encompasses all that we are, all that we have, all that has been given by God.  It’s an all-of-life call that recognizes that a time is coming when all the money/accumulation/stuff will be as rusty relics or moth-eaten clothes.  The question that this parable asks us is, “What do we value above all else?”  “What is the fundamental underlying underpinning value for our lives?”  We absolutely need to talk about money.  Someone has said:

“Wealth is one of the biggest hindrances to a life of committed discipleship, regardless of one’s position on the economic spectrum. The rich hoard what they have, and the poor covet what they have not. No one is exempt from the lure of possession, be the motivation, greed or insecurity. Although money in itself is neutral, the potential power and pitfalls of one’s dealings with wealth make it a revealing barometer of one’s true attitude toward God, life on earth, and life beyond.”

“And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” (16:9)  The good thing about what the dishonest manager did – the commendable thing – is that he did something.  Use money/goods/property in the service of the kingdom of God.  You can’t serve God and wealth.  The Pharisees scoffed at this.  Of course, you can!  No, you can’t, actually.  You’ll love one and despise the other, and which one do you think is going to end up on the short end of that stick?  Make friends for yourself by means of dishonest wealth means pursue the values of the kingdom with every transaction/investment. It means pursue the values of the kingdom in giving things and money away.  It means pursuing love, mercy, justice, grace, unmerited favour with everything – not to gain something for ourselves or to look for reciprocity but because such acts have consequences that stretch into eternity in the goodness and grace and love of God.

What might happen if we were to take Jesus’ words seriously? “Strive for his kingdom” is how Jesus put it in an earlier passage about endlessly chasing after what we will eat and what we will wear (Luke 12:31).  “Sell your possessions and give alms” is the call. (Luke 12:33)  Give your money away; give your stuff away without expecting to get it back. (Luke 6:30).  At a bbq I was at over the weekend, I heard someone ask, “What if anything is counter-culture today?”  Surely this is counter-cultural in a day we are taught that self-indulgence is a good thing,  Go on, you’re worth it.  In a day in which we’re taught that we have the right to spend all our money on ourselves and we’re actually helping the economy when we do.  Consumer spending was once touted as patriotic duty in our neighbour to the south.  Every year, as someone has said, the definition of what we need expands.  How much do we need?  What must we do??

Selling everything is a high bar.  That’s not to say we won’t ever reach it or be called to it as individuals or as a church, for that matter.  John the Baptist laid some stuff out as he prepared the way for his cousin.  If you have more than you need, give it away.  Two coats?  Give one away.  Too much food?  Give it away.  Jesus has already spoken some thoughts on what we should do.  We heard them during Lent, and here they are again.  Invite those who can’t reciprocate to your tables.  Turn the tables on the whole notion of “What can I get out of this?” when it comes to hospitality.  On the other side, accept invitations from people who have less than you.  When Jesus sent his followers out ahead of him in Luke 10, the only stipulation about being hosted was that people in the house share in peace.  “Remain there, Jesus says, eating and drinking whatever they provide.”  Doesn’t have to be fancy.  If there is one place where socio-economic differences should be broken down and deeply loving relationships be nurtured which erase socio-economic lines, is it not the church?  If you’re seeing this in your church, know that God is at work.  If you’re not, then listen to what Jesus is saying.  “Let anyone with ears listen!”

Last week I talked about parables being like poetry in that they help us to imagine what might be.  American novelist/poet/essayist Wendell Berry wrote a poem which describes the position of the children of the world and the children of light:

And then…

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

After all, it’s only money. May all we do with it be in service to resurrection – new life in the kingdom of God both now and to come.

Amen 

Parables are stories that are meant to cut us to the heart.  One writer has called them “arrows of God.”  They invite us to come to an understanding of everything in a whole new way – God, ourselves, life, death, everything.  Stories that cause us to see everything in the light of the one who is telling them – in the light of Christ.  The meaning in a parable can be hard to pin down.  They are stories that are meant to reveal something of what is, at heart, a mystery.  Something which is beyond our ability to understand.  One writer puts it like this – “We need parables because of two equally deep mysteries:  the mystery of God and the mystery of human life.”  Parables are stories that are meant to fire our imagination.  What is God like?  What does it mean to live in God’s grace?  Who might God call us and enable us to be?  In this way, they’re a lot like poetry.  Aristotle thought that poetry was a more serious pursuit than history.  History, he thought, is limited to what has happened, while poetry is free to explore what might happen.

What might happen to us as we sit with Jesus this summer and hear his words?  One of the great truths of our faith is that God is revealed in the everyday.  No matter where we stand on matters of faith (or what we put our faith in) we don’t need anything more than experience of life to begin to come to an understanding of Jesus’ words as he speaks in parables.  Well, the experience of life and the help of the Holy Spirit.  Let’s pray.

We really should be known for our joy.  At the heart of the good news of Jesus, there is joy.  At the heart of these two parables, there is joy.  There is joy in being found.  There is joy in finding.  In order to begin to understand this, we need only know what it’s like to be lost or what it’s like to have lost something.  I have a vivid memory of wandering away from my mother on a shopping trip to Albion Mall when I was about 5 years of age.  Looking around and suddenly realizing the woman you’ve been following is not your mom!  They took me to the security office and made an announcement over the mall’s PA system.  I remember losing my wedding ring in the house and looking for it frantically.  I couldn’t find it.  Nicole assured me, “It’ll turn up,” but lost in the house is still lost, right?  Some weeks later, Nicole would find it under the bedroom radiator, and I remember vividly her calling out to me through the bedroom window one afternoon as I was in the backyard to tell me it had been found.  Someone has said that when one is lost, there is no thought more dear to us than home.  When one is searching, there is no thought more pleasing than finding.  We have joy in being found.  There is joy in heaven in us being found.  What else could we do but have a party?

 Before we get there, we have a problem going on in our story.  Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem.  We remember how people have grumbled about who Jesus eats with and who Jesus welcomes at his table.  These grumblings are being made known publicly.  We like to separate ourselves up into categories and pit ourselves against people who belong to different categories.  On one side, we have religious authorities who are holding up signs that say things like “Jesus – Who Did You Eat With Last Night?!” and yelling things like “Unworthy!”   On the other side, we have a group of people yelling back, “Hypocrite!” and “Self-righteous!!”

Jesus is having none of this talk about camps.  We have called ourselves Christians, which started in Antioch according to Acts 11.  Literally “little Christs.”  In the past few years, some have rejected this label.  You will hear people say “Follower of Christ “ or “Christ follower”.  I’ve used those terms myself, and there’s nothing wrong with them.  Lately, I’ve been thinking of considering myself something like a “recovering sinner” in the same way that Alcoholics Anonymous uses the term “recovering alcoholic.”  We are all in the same flock when it comes to our need for God’s grace.  The only difference between people is our level of acknowledgement of our need for grace – an acknowledgement that we are called to make daily/hourly/minutely.  In days like this in our church, we find ourselves remembering those who have gone before us, those whose faith shaped our own.  I keep this file folder among my books.  My father had kept it – a record of my school-age accomplishments.  This is what he wrote on the outside of the file – “Various honours re. David M.J Thomas in this file.  Someday he may identify with the apostle Paul re. the value of the same (Phil 3:7).  Nevertheless, these honours signify a lot of character and hard labour.  From the point of view of an old soldier/sinner/Saint.”

When it comes to questions about who is welcome, who we eat with, who is included, perhaps we should think of the church as a kind of Sinner’s Anonymous and ourselves as recovering sinners/Saints.  I believe that Jesus is speaking some heavy irony in his parable when he speaks of the 99 righteous ones who need no repentance.  None of us is righteous on our own.  I inherited a love for the writing of Frederick Buechner from my father.  Frederick Beuchner had this to say about AA and the church:

“A.A. is the name of a group of men and women who acknowledge that addiction to alcohol is ruining their lives. Their purpose in coming together is to give it up and help others do the same. They realize they can't pull this off by themselves. They believe they need each other, and they believe they need God. The ones who aren't so sure about God speak instead of their Higher Power.

When they first start talking at a meeting, they introduce themselves by saying, 'I am John. I am an alcoholic,' 'I am Mary. I am an alcoholic,' to which the rest of the group answers each time in unison, 'Hi, John,' 'Hi, Mary.' They are apt to end with the Lord's Prayer or the Serenity Prayer. Apart from that, they have no ritual. They have no hierarchy. They have no dues or budget. They do not advertise or proselytize. Having no buildings of their own, they meet wherever they can.

Nobody lectures them, and they do not lecture each other. They simply tell their own stories with the candour that anonymity makes possible. They tell where they went wrong and how day by day, they are trying to go right. They tell where they find the strength and understanding and hope to keep trying. Sometimes one of them will take special responsibility for another—to be available at any hour of day or night if the need arises. There's not much more to it than that, and it seems to be enough. Healing happens. Miracles are made.

You can't help thinking that something like this is what the Church is meant to be and maybe once was before it got to be Big Business. Sinners Anonymous. 'I can will what is right but I cannot do it,' is the way Saint Paul put it, speaking for all of us. 'For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do' (Romans 7:19). 

'I am me. I am a sinner.' 'Hi, you.' It is the forgiveness of sins, of course. It is what the Church is all about.   No matter what far place alcoholics end up in, either in this country or virtually anywhere else, they know that there will be an A.A. meeting nearby to go to and that at that meeting, they will find strangers who are not strangers to help and to heal, to listen to the truth and to tell it. That is what the Body of Christ is all about.”

The heart of heaven is God seeking us in love.  “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” (15:4)  In reality, not many of us.  It doesn’t make sense.  Leave 99% of your flock in danger to look for one that you might never even find.  It’s just a sheep.  It doesn’t make economic sense to us who want to commodify everything and everyone.  This guy is crazy about that sheep!  God is crazy with love about each and every one.  No wonder the image of the shepherd means so much to us.  Listen to how the prophecy of Ezekiel is borne out - “I myself will search for my sheep” (Ezekiel 34:11). “I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered” (Ezekiel 34:12). “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak” (Ezekiel 34:16). “I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey” (Ezekiel 34:22).  “Oh, save your people and bless your heritage! Be their shepherd and carry them forever,” the Psalmist sang (Psalm 28:9).  Throughout our lives - “Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs, I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save” (Isaiah 46:4).  The sheep on its own is lost, in danger, defenceless.  It’s not wilderness-smart.  The search is relentless.  There’s this beautiful image of the sheep’s owner laying the sheep over his shoulders.  We can imagine him running his hands over the sheep’s limbs, making sure it’s ok, picking brambles, thorns, burrs that might have become stuck to its wool as it wandered about now, knowing if it would ever be found.  Who would mount such a search for one sheep? 

We might have wandered off.  We might simply be misplaced.  God is the ultimate seeker.  Blaise Pascal heard the Shepherd say, “You would not be searching for me had I not already found you.”  God is like a sheep owner.  God is like a woman who lights a lamp and sweeps her house, and searches carefully until she finds her lost coin.  We don’t have too many images of God as a sweeping/searching woman in the windows of our churches (or elsewhere), and maybe we should.  The equivalent of a day’s wages.  One-tenth of this woman’s savings.  If imagining an extravagant search for one sheep out of 100 is beyond us – if the ways of God seem too far beyond us – perhaps we can imagine not settling for something being lost in the house.  Lighting a lamp, sweeping, upending things, moving furniture until that precious coin is found.  Some might have said, “Why doesn’t she just wait until it turns up?”  Some might say “She spent more on the party she threw than the coin was worth.  Again, economics is not the point.  The point is the joy in something lost being found.

What else could we do but have a party to reflect the joy that’s going on in the heavens?  “Your kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven,” we pray.  How could we not want to gather around a table which is in part a reflection of the joy going on in the heavens? 

At the same time this sheep owner and this woman are proving themselves to be models of discipleship.  Someone has said, “Each of them works hard to find the lost; neither of them is dissuaded by the cost of discipleship; each of them is a generous host, ready to think of their own property as a gift to be shared with others.” 

So as we gather around God’s table, may we not be scandalized at the scope of Jesus’ welcome.  May we remember that we all stand alike here as people in need of grace?  Over the next couple of months, as church activities have lessened, may we seek opportunities to extend and accept welcomes around tables, whether it’s for a meal or for something to drink and a snack.  May the joy of being found and finding be with us no matter our circumstances, and may this be true for all of us. Amen

“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church (the Temple)  and in Christ Jesus (the Temple) to all generations, forever and ever.  Amen.”  (Eph 3:20-21)

Listen to what comes after it.  “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called…what does this look like?... with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace…” (Eph 4:1-3)

A sort of Pauline “Mind how you go.”  Let us hear it with the love and care with which it is intended.  Let us tell it to one another with that same love and care (because it’s very easy not to care how each other are going or live lives that are cut off from one another).  I beg you.  Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.  Lead a life worthy of the set apartness for which you have been set apart in Christ.  Lead a life worthy of the holiness for which you have been made holy in Christ. 

Why is this necessary for us to hear?  Because doing wrong, sin, our tendency to mess things up, is pervasive and invasive.  Let us take our tendency to mess things up seriously.  Let us take the Word of God for us seriously.  Too often it seems that we attribute wrongdoing to stupidity or a lack of knowledge – at least in other people.  “What an idiot!” we say or “How could they be so stupid?!”  Let us not forget that we are in a war against powers and principalities that want nothing more than disruption in our loving relationship with God and with one another and with God’s good creation.

Thankfully we are not left alone in this war.  We’ve been hearing this message through these three weeks.  “I am with you,” says the Lord. “Take courage, take courage, take courage,” says the Lord, “For I am with you.  My spirit abides among you.  Do not fear.”  Thankfully we are not left unequipped in this war. (armour of God)  Let us ask God to bless his word to us and give us attentive hearts this morning.

It's now the ninth month (December in our calendars) and this third word from God comes from the prophet Haggai.  It’s a day of ceremony to mark the foundation of temple being laid – the equivalent of one of the ground-breaking ceremonies that we still have today.  They used to be about golden shovels, and everyone being dressed up.  Today they’re more about ribbons and giant scissors, but we get the idea.  Before he talks about the problem of the day, the issue against which one has to be on guard, Haggai asks a question of the priests.

Interlude – Holiness:  There are two concepts of holiness in the OT.  The first has to do with the nature of God as holy – wholly holy, separate from limitation or sin.  The second has to do with objects or people being set apart for God’s purpose or service.  In this case it’s meat that would be consecrated or set apart for God’s purpose in a sacrifice, being brought home where it would be eaten with a day.  So we have the notion of things being consecrated or defiled, clean or unclean. End of Interlude  

Here's Haggai’s illustration – “Ask the priests for a ruling: If one carries consecrated meat in the fold of one’s garment, and with the fold touches bread, or stew, or wine or oil, or any kind of food, does it become holy?  The priests answered, “No.”  Then Haggai said, “If one who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?”  The priests answered, “Yes, it becomes unclean.”

Someone has put the question like this - “Consider the contagious power of dirt. It takes only one drop of motor oil to pollute a gallon of water, while innumerable gallons of water will not turn motor oil into something drinkable. When children touch the wall with their dirty hands they leave a dirty mark, yet if someone touches the same wall with clean hands it doesn’t leave a clean mark. Dirt is far more contagious than cleanliness.”  One pair of dark wash jeans thrown in with your light laundry is going to turn everything a little blue, while WHATS THE OTHER SIDE TO THIS ANALOGY?

“So it is with this people, and with this nation before me, says the Lord; and so with every work of their hands, and what they offer there is unclean.” (2:14)  The exiles who had returned to Jerusalem had constructed an altar.  Sacrifice and worship were happening, but that was as far as things went.  Remember the situation that God addressed through his Haggai in chapter 1.  These people say the time has not yet come to build the Lord’s house.  It was not the time to give God a foundational place in their lives, they had other things to attend to after all.  It was not time to cultivate and foster a place of centrality for Yahweh in their lives.  They were going through the religious motions, but God didn’t have much meaning beyond those prescribed worship times.

Do we know what that’s like?  To offer to God little more than a prescribed time and place to come before Him?  Once a week and that’s it.  Once a month and that’s it.  Twice a year and that’s it.  I knew a time in my own life when worship of God didn’t mean much more than a particular time and a particular place and that was church on Sunday morning.  Vast areas of my life were reserved from God or anything God might require of me/any way that God might require me to be that I didn’t want to be.  This is what I thought freedom was, you see.  “Before a stone was placed upon stone in the Lord’s temple, how did you fare?”  How was that for us?  How is that for us?

We looked last week at the message to take courage and to work.  We said that working in our context means to carry on with patterns of worship praise and prayer together and individually;  of gathering in small groups; of acts of hospitality and welcome; of acts of generosity and kindness and compassion.  As we encourage one another in these patterns, we’re called to mind how we go.  We’ve spoken of opening ourselves up to God building us as individual stones in the temple that is the church.  In this we must mind how we go.  It's been said that the ultimate danger of temple building or any works of religion is the temptation for us to find our righteousness or our holiness within ourselves.  To think that we’re pretty good at this God thing and God and everyone else should feel lucky to have me on the team.  The danger is “to believe that association with the things of God automatically communicates moral purity, right judgement, unconquerable power – all of those qualities associated with holiness, that is, the total otherness of God.  How many futile crusades have been launched on the basis of such blind assumptions!  How many communities have been split by those claiming such rightness! How many presuppositions of such superiority have prevented the communication or the receipt of the gospel!”  To know the words of Scripture; to be familiar with the hymns of the faith; to be able to speak pious sounding words; to volunteer 20 hours each week; none of this conveys holiness/cleanness/righteousness. We are not left there of course!  No matter how these words resonate with us now or resonate when we consider our past, we are not left there.  Look at verse 15 and those words of which we spoke last week that turn everything around.  “But now…”  But God.  But now.  Consider what will come to pass from this day on.  God does not abandon His people, even in our disobedience and disregard.  God does not abandon us.  The promise is one of blessing – “From this day on, I will bless you.” (2:19)  It’s December and next year’s crops have been planted.  The storehouses are getting depleted.  The vine, the fig tree and the pomegranate are bare.  The promise here is one of new life.  “From this day on, I will bless you.”

Consider what will come to pass from this day on.  From this day on which the laying of the foundation of the temple is celebrated.  This talk of sacrifices might seem strange to us, but we get it. The sacrifice has been made.  We get it.  I pray we get it.  Christ has become the sacrifice by which we are brought into a right relationship with God.  The good and right and fitting and proper response to this truth is to offer our gifts, our praise and prayer together, our faith, our acts of love, compassion and generosity.  The good and fitting and proper response to the truth of Christ’s sacrifice is to offer these not in a compartmentalized way, but based on offering ourselves – all that we are -  as living sacrifices, made holy and pleasing to God through Jesus with hearts transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

“From this day on I will bless you,” says God through the prophet.  I know we often think of being blessed in terms of being in good circumstances.  The blessing promised here that is fulfilled in Jesus goes beyond any circumstance.  Again we go back to the words of Paul to the Ephesian brothers and sisters.  “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places…” (Eph 1:3)  What kind of blessings?  Adoption as his children. (Eph 1:5)  Redemption through his blood. (Eph 1:7)  Forgiveness of trespasses. (Eph 1:7)  The seal of the Holy Spirit. (Eph 1:13)

From this day on.  There was a significance to this day of foundation laying and I pray that there is a significance for us who are hearing God’s word this day. For us as a temple of living stones, our role is to anticipate and be a signpost pointing toward the restored, renewed relationship with God that will characterize the new heaven and new earth.  This is an all-of-life role.     

The warning in our passage is against empty worship of God that has little meaning to the rest of our lives.  The warning is against the invasive and pervasive nature of sin.  Is there a room in our heart that we want to keep God out of?  Is there an area of our lives that we reserve for ourselves?  Is there a matter of sin/doing wrong/our tendency to mess things up in our lives that we need to bring to God?  We’re going to have a chance today to affirm our desire to be built as living stones in the temple of God’s church.  We’re going to have the chance to leave what needs to be left as we pray “From this day on Lord, build us together as your church.”  We have a basket of stones here that we’re invited to take in a few moments and lay them on the table.  As the music plays, the invitation to us is to lay our lives down before God as we lay our stones; to lay those things aside which need to be laid aside with the help of the Holy Spirit.  Let us do so secure in God’s promise of blessing, and secure in the promise that the Holy Spirit is at work in us to do far more than we could ever ask or imagine.  May we remind one another to mind how we go as we go along with one another and with our loving God. Amen. 

More immediately, what is it that we need to hear from God this morning?  You’ve come back or are watching online again.  The word that we heard last week was “I am with you.”  The call on our lives is to give the foundational place in our lives to God.  This is what we have been created for.  We talked about the man who is the embodiment of God’s presence – the new temple, Christ our cornerstone.  We talked about ourselves being built by the Holy Spirit into individual stones which make up the temple which is the Church.  We talked about knowing fullness of life in Christ, living most gracefully and beautifully just as a tree swallow is at its most graceful and beautiful in flight – we’re upheld on eagle’s wings (!) as another prophet put it (and we sang it together).

How wonderful this all is!

And yet we get discouraged.  And yet we feel overwhelmed.  And yet we may long for some glorious past – which is maybe not so bad in and of itself, but it can paralyse us into inaction today.  This is the situation into which Haggai speaks, “In the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Haggai.” (2:1)  The word of the Lord comes to us on the 11^th day of the sixth month of the year 2023.  Let us pray to God to give us attentive hearts.

In our story, it is about 7 weeks after Haggai first spoke to Governor Zerubabbel and High Priest Joshua.  We remember at the end of Chapter 1 how all the people committed themselves to the task of building.  It is about 4 weeks since the work of rebuilding the temple began.  The issue now is not the question of “Is now the time to rebuild the temple?”  The issue is not the centrality of Yahweh in lives.  The issue now is one of discouragement or even despondency which is arising from the comparison of what they are building now to what once stood among what is now largely ruins (the foundation of the temple has been laid at this point).  They are realizing both the magnitude of their task along with the meagreness of their resources.  “Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory?”  To make matters worse, the 7^th month has three holidays in it on which work could not be done.  The third one was the Feast of Booths, which lasted 7 days and which is just finishing as Haggai brings this word from God.  For those who remember the temple that Solomon built, there is a longing here for golden days – literally as when the temple was lined with gold.  Not only that but there were sacred items which will never be recovered – the Ark of the Covenant which contained the two tablets given to Moses, Aaron’s rod, even a pot of manna.  All gone!

We get this.  Whole political movements can come to power based on the promise of restoring former glory.  Such a longing can spur is into discouragement, despondency, even despair.  What does this look for us today?  It might look like living in the ruins of shattered dreams and plans we had for our lives.  It might look like longing for a day when we were filled with a single-hearted devotion to God that we no longer feel.  It might look like longing for the days when churches were filled and there was so much going on.  If we’ve immigrated, it might look like longing for an experience of church that we knew in our country of origin that just hasn’t been replicated here.  It might be longing for a movement of God that we’ve read about in history, like the Great Awakening.  It might be something like the Asbury revival which happened recently at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky.  Did you hear about this?  A regular worship service in the college chapel didn’t stop.  It turned into a praise and prayer time that lasted more than two weeks.  Thousands flocked to it and were blessed.

“Who is it among you that saw this house in its former glory?  How does it look to you now?”

Well, how does it look?  Doesn’t seem like much does it?  Of course it’s good to remember the words of Haggai’s colleague Zechariah here when he spoke to the same situation.  Do you know what he said to those of us in our discouragement?  “…whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice.”  Whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice.

I’ve often said that the Bible doesn’t sugar-coat things and we’re not called to Pollyannaism or toxic positivity.  At the same time we’re not called to Chicken Little-ism – running around the barnyard in despair crying out “The sky is falling!” The Bible looks at the reality of things and the reality of the human condition and God speaks into this reality through the prophet Haggai, forthtelling and foretelling in this passage.  To begin, God doesn’t give us a sort of divine “There, there, don’t worry.”  God doesn’t chastise or reprimand us saying “How dare you think of feel this way!”  Instead God agrees that it doesn’t look like much.  “Is it not in your sight as nothing?”  It doesn’t look like much.

That’s the problem in the text.  That’s the problem in our world/in our lives.  Thanks be to God that we’re not left there.  Thanks be to God that here comes the grace!

Yet now.  But now as it’s translated in many versions.  Yet now… But now… These words echo through God’s story and they change everything.  “But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him on the ark.”  But God remembers us.  “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”  “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”  “ When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead . . .”  I was lost, but God.  I could not forgive, but God.  I was cut off, but God.  What is your own “but God” truth? Let us hear the words of God to us.  Yet now, take courage.  Take courage O Zerbbabel.  Take courage, O Joshua.  Take courage, all you people of the land.  Leaders.  Everyone.  Take courage.  Work!  Press on.  Keep on pushing as the Impressions sang (look it up!).  Keep on maintaining the patterns of prayer, praise, listening for God’s voice in God’s word, gathering in small groups, gathering for worship together, gathering around the Lord’s table, celebrating milestone together, carrying out acts of service/compassion/kindness/mercy.  Take courage!  Keep on doing those things together.  Don’t drift.  Don’t ease up.  I’ve called you to do my work!  Again these words echo and reverberate.  Joshua was no Moses and it didn’t matter.  “Be strong and courageous” was the word from God to him.  “Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” 

I need to hear that often and I know I’m not the only one.  Thanks be to God for God’s word to us.

Take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord, work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts.  We don’t need to find the courage within ourselves.  The outer call to work is based on the inner call to courage and (later) not to fear.  We don’t need to call up courage and not fearing on our own.  They’re based on two things.

One is a truth about God.  “I am with you, according to the promise that I made when you came out of Egypt.  My spirit abides among you.”  We are called to remember.  We are called to look back.  Let our looking back remind us of what God has done.  “To God be the glory, great things he hath done” is a hymn we sing.  We remembered last week the integral nature of God’s promise of presence was to the covenant.  Listen to how the presence of God’s spirit is described in Isaiah 63 – “Then they remembered the days of old, of Moses his servant. Where is the one who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock?  Where is the one who put within them his holy spirit, who caused his glorious arm to march at the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them to make for himself an everlasting name, who led them through the depths?  Like a horse in the desert, they did not stumble.  Like cattle that go down in the valley, the spirit of the Lord gave them rest.” (Is 63:11-14)  Where is the one who brought them out of the sea?  Where is the one who put within them his holy spirit?  Here.  With us.  Within us.  The Holy Spirit of the living God.  The Holy Spirit of the living Christ in you the hope of glory.  Let us tell it forth and say to one another “Take courage dear family of God!”

Foretelling -speaking of future events – is the other part of prophecy.  “Do not fear,” says Haggai.  May God grant us the faith to see beyond the rubble of current circumstances.  “For thus says the Lord of hosts; Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land (in other words – everything):  and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts.” (2:6-8)  There is a material aspect to this promise which the people of Jerusalem and surrounding area will see come to pass.  The temple will be completed and it will be funded by the Persian royal treasury.  Let us not be fearful about scant resources.  Paul wrote to the people of Philippi about how his financial needs for ministry had been met (with their help) and promised them.  This is what he said – “And my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 4:19)  I have no doubt that if God is calling us to God’s service here in North Toronto, and if we are together being faithful to that call, that we will have all the spiritual and material gifts we need. 

The final promise comes in v 9 – “The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts; and this place I will give prosperity (peace), says the Lord of hosts.” (2:9)  There is a where-this-whole-story-ends-up aspect to this promise.  Listen to how John describes the scene of the new heaven and new earth and new Jerusalem in  Rev 21:22-25 – “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.  And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.  The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day – and there will be no night there.”

That is our hope.  That is our confident expectation of good.  Universal shalom.  Universal good, peace, flourishing for all.  The Spirit of that Lamb is with us, calling and enabling us to be that shalom now.  This is the power at work within us that is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.  We who have returned from exile (and if you have not returned from exile the invitation to return is before you).  Let us not despise the day of small things.  When we returned from exile, who would have imagined that:

Blythwood would become a home for so many newcomers to Canada who have found a faith family here?  New leaders would be called, would answer that call, and in so doing would find new life and formation in the Spirit?  New partnerships would be forged with places like Seeds of Hope?  Neighbours would be walking up to our building on a Saturday morning with generous hearts and goods to share, that we might share good?  Anything else?

Let us look to the past not to be dismayed, but to be encouraged and strengthened.  Let us look to the past to see what God has done, and know that the Holy Spirit that guided and enlivened is God with us right now.  Let us look at our present and ask God to give us eyes to see and ears to hear how God is working.  Let us remember that in the kingdom of God, our expectations should be nothing but great.

Speaking of this book of the prophet Haggai, Martin Luther had this to say: “If we should consider the subject matter unsympathetically, the prophet will seem quite trivial on the surface, especially in our day.  Everything about which he prophesies, especially about rebuilding the temple, has ceased.  As a consequence, we must consider the subject matter correctly, so that we look not so much at it as the Word of God.” The word of the Lord came by the prophet, Haggai came to the people of God at a particular time and a particular place.  The word of the Lord comes to us by the prophet Haggai at a particular time and a particular place, and I believe that God has something of great significance to say to us.  Let us pray and ask for attentive hearts

The time and place in our story is Jerusalem.  In the second year of King Darius (of Persia), in the sixth month on the first day of the month.  So August 29^th, 520 BC.  In 587 BC, Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed Jerusalem and the temple which Solomon had built.  The city’s people were taken away into captivity.  In the interim, the Persian Empire had become the prevailing power.  In 539, Persian King Cyrus decreed that exiles could return.  This is where the stories of Ezra and Nehemiah begin, and we looked at those stories as we were returning from a kind of exile ourselves (I’m talking about COVID).  “Return  Rebuild  Renew” was the call, and it’s still the call.

A remnant of the people of Israel has returned.  Things are not as they once were.  What had been a large kingdom has been reduced to a group of people living in and around Jerusalem, trying to hang on.  They’re subjects living on the fringe of an Empire that’s just had a change in leadership, so there is political uncertainty.  Things are precarious economically.  Into this situation speaks the word of the Lord through the prophet Haggai.  The last of the 12 Prophets as they’re known in the Hebrew Bible.  Mentioned in Ezra 5:1 – “Now the prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, son of Iddo, prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel who was over them.”

I just want to pause here for a moment and talk about prophecy and prophesying.  Oftentimes when we consider prophecy, we think primarily of someone who is speaking of the future – events that are yet to come.  We call this foretelling.  The thing that OT prophets spend most of their time on, however, is speaking the word of the Lord concerning what is going on today (or in their day).  They speak about attitudes and actions in the present.  We call this forth-telling.  It makes prophets unpopular, and it’s not for nothing that Jesus laments over Jerusalem in Matthew 23:17.  Both foretelling and forth-telling will be going on as we read Haggai.

The other thing that we need to consider is what the temple in Jerusalem represented before it was destroyed.  The temple was the representation or physical manifestation of God’s presence with God’s people. God’s promise, “I am with you,” was part of the covenant – the loving agreement – God made with the people of Israel.  This promise was, in fact, key.  Going back to just after the Golden Calf episode, God tells Moses, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” (Ex 33:14). Moses tells God that if God’s presence is not with them, he doesn’t even want to go – “If your presence will not go, do not carry us up from here.” (Ex. 33:15)  The answer comes back from God – “I will do the very thing you have asked…” (Ex 33:17)  The presence of God was manifested in the pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night that guided them.  The presence of God was manifested in the tabernacle or tent of meeting, which was set up just outside the camp whenever they stopped.  The temple that was built by Solomon in Jerusalem was a more permanent physical representation that God lived in the middle of his people.  The destruction of the temple in 587 BC was calamitous not only nationally and militarily but theologically.   Had God abandoned His people?

So let us keep this in mind as we listen for God’s word to us today.  God with us.  The temple.  The man that is called Emmanuel – God with us.  The one who said that if the temple were destroyed, he could build it again in three days.  Our living Christ as the embodiment of God with us.  The Spirit of our living Christ as Christ in you the hope of glory.  Our bodies as the habitation of God.  The Church as a temple of living stones being built up and founded on Christ, our cornerstone.  Let us keep all these things in mind as hear the words of the prophet.

Who is calling for a reordering of priorities.  He is speaking to the leaders, Zerubabbel, the governor and Joshua, the high priest – each of whom stand in the line of David the King and Aaron the original high priest, respectively.  The word from God is for everyone, starting with leadership.  The question is, “What time is it?”  “Thus says the Lord of hosts: these people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.” (1:2). How can we be speaking of God as the foundation of anything in this economy?  How can we be speaking of God as the foundation in this climate of political uncertainty and social upheaval?  I have to take care of myself and those closest to me.  I have other priorities right now. The question which Haggai for those who follow Christ (or those who are wondering what following Christ is about) is not so much belief or unbelief.  The concern here is spiritual apathy.  The question for us as individuals is, “What time is it for us?”  Is it time to build the temple or to build our own temples?  The question for this church or any church is what is given foundational priority in our life together (and we can see how this metaphor of building and foundation and building materials works so very well).  Haggai doesn’t browbeat people here as he brings God’s word.  He asks a question.  “Is it a time for you yourselves to live in your panelled houses, while this house lies in ruins?” (1:4) 

Is it?

Are we living lives that are turned in on ourselves?  If so, how is that working out for us?  “Consider how you have fared,” says God through the prophet – a sort of divine “How’s that working out for you?”  The word translated “consider” here is literally “set your heart upon.”  Stop and let us set our hearts upon how that has worked out.  A life of futility.  Chasing after wind.  Chasing after a never-enoughness.  “You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm, and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes.” (1:6-7)  Keep on accumulating.  Keep on scrolling.  Hear the word of God.  “All things are wearisome; more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing.” (Eccl 1:8).

We are not left there, however, because God is still speaking.  “Consider how you have fared.  Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honoured.” (1:7-8)  God delights in our delight in Him because this is what we are made for.  God’s name is honoured; God’s ways our made known when we seek Him first and his righteousness. So we pray and sing, “Jesus be the centre.”  God is building the temple, the church, and the individual stones in it (us).  This doesn’t mean there is nothing for us to do.  We are called to join God in this work.  The returned community that Haggai addressed gives us a wonderful example of the good and right and fitting response to God’s word.  They obeyed and the feared God – they gave God reverence and honour.  Even their response was the result of the Lord stirring them, and we continue to pray, “Lord, stir our hearts by your Spirit.”   Someone has said,

“It is because God is committed to establishing his kingdom in and through us that we are called to seek that kingdom first, above all other things. We should be stirred to a holy zeal to love and build God’s church. To be sure, the result of seeking first God’s kingdom will not necessarily be earthly prosperity, or even large, “successful” churches…. (Jesus’) own earthly ministry was not characterized by prosperity or a large following. But God does promise to be with his repentant people in the present and to fulfill his kingdom goals through us in the longer term. Even now, he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 1:3). Even now, he is at work in us by his Spirit, convicting us of sin and stirring us up to desire holiness. What else do we need or want? In place of our constant preoccupation with food that does not fill, with drink that does not satisfy, and with clothing that cannot warm our souls, God promises us real food, drink, and clothing. In Christ, he gives us the bread of life, a fountain of living water… In place of the futile things to which we so readily give our lives, the Lord promises to give us true and lasting satisfaction in him.”

The Lord’s message came to these people, and the message was “I am with you.” The spirits of Zerubabbel, Joshua, and all the remnants of the people were stirred.  They were all together in their efforts.  They came and worked on the house of the Lord of hosts, their God, on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month.  May the same be said of us on the 4^th day of the month in the sixth month.  May our obeying Jesus’ words in coming to this table, and our seeking his presence here be an outward sign of a new repentance, a new turning toward him.  

In him there is fulness of life.  This is what we have been created for.  Eugene Petersen, author and pastor, wrote of watching some tree swallows one summer at a lakeside retreat in Montana.  After watching the swallows gathering food for their chicks for some weeks, he was happy to see the three baby swallows lined up on a tree branch one day, about a metre and a half above the surface of the lake.  They were about to learn how to fly for the first time. One of the parents came alongside and started nudging them toward the end of the branch.  The first one fell off and found his wings before he hit the water.  He was off and flying.  Same thing for the second one in line.  The third one was not so keen.  He resisted his parents’ efforts.  He swung downwards but kept his grip on the branch with his baby swallow feet.  The parent started pecking at his little talons until, finally, the young bird let go – swooping over the surface of the lake on his first flight.  This is what Petersen had to say: “Birds have feet and can walk.  Birds have talons and can grasp a branch securely.  They can walk, they can cling.  But flying is their characteristic action, and not until they fly are they living at their best, gracefully and beautifully.”  Many things clamour for our attention and lay claim to being worthy of the central place in our lives.  We have been created in God’s image, and the seeking after his Kingdom – his delight and his honour is the foundation of a life lived (and lives lived together) gracefully and beautifully.  God helping us, and the Holy Spirit stirring us, let us build such a foundation together.

The Holy Spirit as a bird.  The Holy Spirit descending like a dove on Jesus at his baptism.  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus declared in his hometown synagogue.  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.  The Spirit of the Lord is upon you.  We talked about Paul’s phrase describing followers of Christ a couple of weeks ago - “In Christ”. To follow Jesus is to be “in Christ”.  The flip side of that phrase is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  Christ in me.  Christ in you.  The Holy Spirit of God in you.  The Holy Spirit of Christ in me.   Not because of any goodness or specialness of my own but because the Holy Spirit is the gift of God. 

Is it any wonder that we celebrate the day on which the Holy Spirit came in a whole new way on that long ago day of Pentecost?

There is another image which is extra-biblical, but I think is a good one, particularly for those of who live in Canada or wherever there may be wild geese about.  The Holy Spirit as a wild goose is an image that comes from ancient Celtic Christianity.  Wild geese are wild and unpredictable, what with their long necks and all.  I came across a new phrase for me recently while reading an article on Canadian slang.  People are apparently calling Canada Geese “cobra chickens,” and there are a lot of videos you can see online to explain why (they’re just guarding their territory).  I had my own encounter with a domestic goose which was scary and unpredictable enough for me.  When my family lived in Bruce County, my dad took up hobby farming.  Some years we would raise geese and one of my jobs was to herd them into the barn every evening.  One evening a gander who was at the end of the line turned toward me right before the barn door.  He spread his wings out and started advancing toward me, swaying his neck and hissing.  I turned around and took off.  Didn’t stop before I jumped to put a fence between us.  I turned around to see the gander toss a disdainful look over his shoulder as he calmly walked into the barn of his own accord. 

It's not always about noise and wildness and unpredictability, of course.  One of our treasured descriptions of the Holy Spirit is that still, small voice that speaks to us.  We remember God speaking to the prophet Elijah.  There was a great wind, but the Lord was not in the wind.  The earth quaked, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.  There was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.  And after the fire, the sound of sheer silence.  “Then there came a voice to him…”  The Holy Spirit speaks to us in silence.  The Holy Spirit nudges us in stillness.  Let us share our stories about how we experience this.  The day I walked through the neighbourhood in prayer, I was coming along Broadway toward Yonge, where the street grades upward slightly.  There was a homeless man pushing a cart filled with a lot of things, and he was having a hard time with it.  I walked past him.  I heard a still, small voice saying, “You’re not just going to walk past him, are you?  Is that supposed to be the result of all this prayer?”  I stopped, and when he reached me, I said, “Would you like a hand pushing that cart up to Yonge?” 

The Holy Spirit brings about tangible practical results.  The Holy Spirit is not simply some ethereal mysterious force.

The Holy Spirit is the fulfillment of the promise of God.  A couple of weeks ago, we talked about living in the promises of God.  We said that to live in the promises of God is to know the goodness of God.

Promises of peace.  Promises of accompaniment.  Promises of transformed hearts.  Promises of empowerment for mission.  This morning in our text, we see the fulfillment of a promise.  “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:49). “You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” (1:5)  “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (1:8)   This is the promise. Here comes the fulfilment.  “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.” (2:1)  They were all together in one place.  In these days, when we have become unused to gathering together at particular times and at particular places, how important is it for us as followers of Christ to gather together in one place?  How important is it for us as followers of Christ to leave ourselves open to the power of God working in us and through us?  I’m not talking here about or trying to lay a guilt trip on those who are unable to gather due to physical limitations.  What is the importance of the call on our lives to be gathering together in one place, praying and praising and listening to God?

The day of Pentecost had come.  They are together in a particular place and at a particular time.  If we associate the word Pentecost with anything, it might be with the Protestant denomination, which so emphasizes the work of the Holy Spirit and personal experience of the Holy Spirit (some of us have been formed and worshipped in that tradition).   Pentecost was a Jewish festival day that happened 50 days after Passover (the literal meaning of Pentecost is ‘fiftieth day”).  The festival commemorated God giving the law to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai after their deliverance from oppression in Egypt.  It was also a harvest festival that celebrated the first fruits of the autumn harvest.

Why is this significant to us?  When we listen for God speaking to us in God’s word, we consider the grand sweep of God’s story from creation to the renewal of all things.  When we consider the giving of the law to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai, we remember the mountain being wreathed in fire and swept by wind.  We remember the promise given through the prophet Jeremiah -  “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jer 31:33). The Holy Spirit as God’s refining fire within us.  The Holy Spirit as the enabler of the fruit of the Spirit in us – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control. 

Speaking of fruit, when we consider the first fruits of the harvest, we are reminded of the Holy Spirit as the seal of God’s presence – the kind of down payment of God with us.  Paul described it like this to the Ephesians – ^“In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit;  this is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.” (Eph 1:13-14)   The Holy Spirit as the first instalment of life lived in communion with God – live lived at home with God – which we experience in part now and will experience fully one day.

A sound came like the rush of a violent wind.  At creation, a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  Again we consider this story in the grand sweep of God’s story.  Something new is being created here.  The new thing that is being created is the church.  This is a pivotal moment!  Divided tongues as of fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

I don’t believe that Luke is trying to tell us something about the mark of a Christian being the ability to speak in another language empowered by the Holy Spirit.  I also don’t believe that the Holy Spirit is incapable of giving a follower of Christ the ability to speak in a language that they do not know.  I wouldn’t tend to try to put any boundaries on the what the Holy Spirit might do.  Each one of them had an individual experience of the Holy Spirit, as a tongue rested on each of them.  There’s no description of what that was like for Peter or James or John or Mary, or any other of the 120 that were gathered.  The description we have is that all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.  This was a communal experience, and collectively, they all become instruments of the power of the Holy Spirit.  It was great to see Nicola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets accept the MVP of the Western Conference Final award this past week. “What does this mean to you?” the sideline reporter asked.  “Nothing,” replied Jokic.  It’s all about the team. In Luke’s recounting of this first Pentecost, it's all about all of us together being filled with the Holy Spirit of God.

In order for what?  In order that doors and walls may be dissolved (metaphorically, at least).  In order that the church might be empowered to go public with the message of the good news of Christ.  Look at what the crowd says about what they’re hearing these followers of Jesus say in their own languages – “… in our own languages, we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.”  This is our part to play as the Holy Spirit gives us power.  There are things beyond our control, like how people will react.  Some will sneer, and that’s ok.  We might even do and say things that make people think we’re drunk, but come one; it’s only 9 am.  I wonder what those things might be.  What might that look like?

May it be our prayer that God would fill us with His Spirit.  Being baptized with the Spirit is generally how we think of receiving the Holy Spirit for the first time.  Being filled with the Spirit is something that happens to Christ’s followers again and again throughout Acts.  “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them” (4:8); “When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were filled with the Holy Spirit” (4:31); “But Saul, also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him” (13:9)  May it happen again and again for us, we pray. 

English poet and lyricist wrote a sonnet called “Pentecost,” which I’m going to read as we close.  This is what he had to say about the elements of which we’ve been speaking – wind, fire, water – along with earth, which is where we come in:

“I was very struck by the way Scripture expresses the presence of the Holy Spirit through the three most dynamic of the four elements, the air, ( a mighty rushing wind, but also the breath of the spirit), water, (the waters of baptism, the river of life, the fountain springing up to eternal life promised by Jesus) and of course fire, the tongues of flame at Pentecost. Three out of four ain’t bad, but I was wondering, where is the fourth? Where is Earth? And then I realized that we ourselves are earth, the ‘Adam’ (from the Hebrew word for “earth” made of the red clay, and we become living beings, fully alive, when the Holy Spirit, clothed in the three other elements, comes upon us and becomes a part of who we are. “Pentecost”

Today we feel the wind beneath our wings. Today the hidden fountain flows and plays. Today, the church draws breath at last and sings As every flame becomes a Tongue of praise. This is the feast of fire, air, and water Poured out and breathed and kindled into earth. The earth herself awakens to her maker And is translated out of death to birth. The right words come today in their right order. And every word spells freedom and release. Today, the gospel crosses every border. All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace. Today, the lost are found in His translation. Whose mother tongue is Love, in every nation.

Thank you, Lord, for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Amen

All because of a story we read in Luke 19.  A story that gave rise to a song that those of a certain age may be familiar with from Sunday School days.  Zacchaeus was a wee little man etc.  It’s a story that captures our imagination, I think, in part because of the details given.  It’s not often we’re given the names of the people whom Jesus encounters as he’s on his way to Jerusalem, much less their occupation and a physical description.  A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich.

The “there” here is Jericho.  About 26 km west of Jerusalem.  Jesus and his followers are continuing south toward Jerusalem in that redemptive parade of which we spoke last week.  Teaching is happening.  Healing is happening.  Welcomes are happening.  Forgiveness is happening.  In chapter 18, right before the passage that we read today, Jesus is stopped by a blind man sitting by the roadside.  Throughout this journey, Jesus has been about bringing in those who are outside.  Bringing those on the margin into the centre.  People would have looked at this man and thought, “What sin did he or his parents commit to cause him to be blind?”  He would have been shunned.  He cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”  Jesus stood still and orders that the man be brought to him.  “What do you want me to do for you?” is the question Jesus asks.  “Lord, let me see again,” is the reply.  Jesus heals him.  “Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.”  We read that the man regained his sight and followed him, glorifying God, and all the people, when they saw it, praised God.

This is Jesus’ mission.  These stories are not detours.  These stories are what Jesus does. Jesus’ mission.

This is the last story we’re going to read for now from Luke’s Gospel, and it’s a good place to end, I think.  The last face-to-face encounter that Jesus has with someone before he enters Jerusalem.  As we hear the story, we’re reminded of other stories we’ve heard in Luke’s gospel.  A story about another tax collector named Levi, to whom Jesus issued the call.  We remember a story about another rich man – a young ruler – who didn’t answer the call from Jesus because of his riches.  Riches make it hard for us to see our need for God but thank God that through him, anything is possible. He was a tax collector.  Not a run-of-the-mill tax collector but a chief tax collector.  He had other tax collectors working for him.  Levels of graft and skimming and all that went along with being a chief tax collector.  In league with the ruling   Romans.  The worst of the worst.  We may remember the words of the Pharisee in the parable that Jesus spoke –“Thank God I am not like other people,” prayed the Pharisee.  “Thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.”  The kind of person that serves as a healthy reminder of how righteous we are.  We like to have such people around.  He’s disconnected despite his wealth.  The people won’t even make room to let him see. His short stature is reflective of his social stature within the town of Jericho.

The thing about this tax collector is he was trying to see who Jesus was.  I would say that there are people all around us who are trying to see who Jesus is.  They may be living on the margins of society, like the blind man that called out to Jesus on his way into Jericho.  They might look outwardly like everything is going great, but there is a lack of connection in their lives.  We might be one of these people as we hear this story, and if so, we are going to hear some good news in a little while.  I want to pause here and ask us to consider ourselves here in this crowd.  In our own desire to see Jesus, do we get in the way of others who want to see him?  Do our own preconceived notions turn us into barriers, or are we so focused on getting to see him ourselves that we miss others who might be looking? 

He ran ahead and climbed a tree.  Now we saw pictures of sycamore trees earlier.  They were not that hard to climb, even for someone who was short.  It’s not like Zacchaeus needed a boost up or anything.  Think about the scene, though.  This is a rather high-ranking official (collaborator though he may be) and a man of wealth in the city of Jericho.  To all the adults out there, when is the last time you climbed a tree? This is a story of seeking for sure.  Zacchaeus is seeking something/someone beyond himself.  He’s not sure what.  For sure, we seek things in this life, and we may not even know what we’re looking for.  The good news is that Jesus is constantly seeking us.  Someone has called this a quest story, but it’s not ultimately about Zacchaeus’ quest.  It’s about Jesus seeking him.  Back in chapter 15, there are three parables that Jesus tells about people seeking things that are lost.  A coin.  A sheep.  A son.  Zacchaeus is making a grand gesture here.  He’s acting without constraint.  Radically you might even say.  In an unseemly way might be another way to put it.  When we hear this, we may be thinking about another man who was the head of a household large enough for its wealth to be divided among his sons.  When we hear about how unseemly it is for a man of means to climb a tree, we may be reminded of how unseemly it was for a patriarch to start running down a laneway toward a road upon which his formerly wayward/free-spending/prodigal/forgetting-where-his-gifts-came from son was seeking to return home.  The waiting father saw him coming from afar and ran out to meet him with forgiveness.

We may be reminded of the extravagance of God’s grace when we consider the unseemly/untoward nature of what Zacchaeus does here in his tree-climbing.  We may be reminded of the grand gesture that has been made on the part of God in the person of Christ.  We should be reminded that any seeking that is done on our part is overarched or founded on the seeking that Christ does for us.  This is a quest story for sure, but the quest is centred on Christ.  Just as Jesus stops before the calls of the blind man and takes notice, Jesus looks up at the tree in which Zacchaeus is perched.  I like to think there’s some humour involved here.  I like to think that Jesus is delighted at the lengths to which this man who’s been excluded from everything has gone.  Jesus calls out his name just as God has been calling out names all along.  Zacchaeus.  How did Jesus know the tax collector’s name? Was it divine knowledge?  Did he ask someone, “What is that man’s name?”  Jesus tells him, “Hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”

The host in the kingdom of heaven becomes the guest.  The one who welcomes us to his table – the one who calls us and welcomes us home - is the same one who stands at the door knocking, saying, “… if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you.”  None of this is ever coercive, you see.  Jesus extends an invitation, and he invites himself to Zacchaeus’ house.  The divine invitation becomes the divine initiative. Come on down!   I must stay at your house today. They call this the divine must. Jesus uses a lot in Luke.  “Did you not know I must be in my Father’s house?”  “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose.” “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”  I must stay at your house today.  This is all part of God’s plan.  Jesus extends an invitation for himself.  I always say I like this because I kind of do the same thing – I’ll invite myself over to someone’s place at the drop of a hat (you’re invited to my place, too, so it’s not just one way).  It's the only time Jesus does it, though.  I must stay at your house today.  The immediacy of the salvation call.  The daily nature of Jesus’ call on our lives.  The question is - what are we going to do with the call this call?  What are we going to do with this call today?  What are we going to do with this call daily?

Zacchaeus’ response is wonderful, and it’s no wonder we remember his name and want to climb sycamore trees and sing songs about him.  So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.  He was happy to welcome him. The joy that accompanies the answer to Jesus’ invitation.  Come on in and stay.  Doesn’t matter what the house looks like to this guest.  Doesn’t matter that we didn’t have time to clean and whatever will they think of us.  Jesus will take care of the cleaning when it comes to the rooms of our hearts.  The point is the welcome in.  This welcome is accompanied by joy. 

And once again, the crowd feels like it needs to block things.  We’ve seen this before.  The response of the hometown crowd when Jesus announced the year of the Lord’s favour.  The response of the Pharisees to Jesus’ welcome of the woman who had been forgiven and loved much.  Are there people who we feel are outside the reach of the Kingdom of God?  Are there people who we feel are undeserving of a welcome and inclusion?  The crowd’s response is a reflection of this kind of attitude.  He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.  Let us hang that label on him. 

The thing is, of course - this was the whole point.  That’s exactly who Jesus came for.  The only qualification you need to follow Christ is to know your need for Christ. Christ draws in the people from the margins.  It’s where Christ works.  If you think you’re the source of your goodness or that you’ve got it all worked out, then you’re not going to be coming down out of that tree and saying, “Yes, come on over and stay!”  At the same time, may we never think we aren’t worthy of God’s love and grace or that the things we’ve done have put us beyond the reach of God’s grace.  Even financial oppressors are not beyond the reach of God’s grace!

Christ draws people in from the margins and puts them in the middle of things.  Someone has noted that “L’Arche Daybreak” does the same thing.  This is the community founded by Jean Vanier to welcome adults with intellectual disabilities.  Some years ago, I had the chance to go see a dress rehearsal for a play they put on for the 50^th anniversary of Larche.  Everyone in the community was not only part of it but given a central place. 

Zacchaeus is restored in the community.  The effects of his restoration are to be felt beyond himself. Today salvation has come to this house. One’s immediate surroundings. Zacchaeus makes another grand gesture.  He’ll give half his possessions to the poor and will pay back four times as much for anyone he’s defrauded.  There are social and economic implications to the salvation that Jesus has brought.  The Christian life looks like something, and its effects are felt in concentric circles that ripple out from us.  “Bear fruit worthy of repentance” was John the Baptist’s call, and Zacchaeus is listening.  We said a couple of weeks ago that salvation or being saved or delivered is not to be reduced to a personal or private matter.  It is also not to be reduced to something in the future – although one day, all of creation will know deliverance fully.  “Salvation has come to this house today,” says Jesus and again, there is an immediacy to this truth. Salvation embraces life in the present, and its effect are meant to be felt and seen.  Salvation brings about transformed hearts and revitalized communities; salvation is the beginning of the setting of all the cosmos/universe in order; salvation is the call and enablement of Christ’s church to make his grace known in word and deed in ever-widening circles (starting with our homes).  Someone has put it like this – “Here in the case of Zacchaeus, his ‘being saved’ refers to a conversion, to be sure, but not in any private sense.  Not only is his household involved, but also the poor who will be beneficiaries of his conversion as well as those people whom he has defrauded.  His salvation, therefore, has personal, domestic, social and economic dimensions.  The whole of life is affected by Jesus’ ministry, a foretaste of the complete reign of God.”

I want that kind of deliverance for myself and for everyone who has heard Jesus’ words.  Today, salvation is here.  Today, the kingdom of heaven is here.  Today, Jesus walks behind, beside and before us.  May our response be that of Zacchaeus – a joyful welcome of the one in whom is light and life.  May this be true for each one of us.

Amen

“He is risen indeed!” 

We are considering the significance (both in our own lives and in the life our world) of this truth.  We have heard about followers of Christ being the body of Christ in our world.  We have heard something of what that has meant practically at Blythwood over the last 28 years.  We have heard about Jesus walking along beside us, about Jesus being revealed in His word and at tables.  We have heard about a higher love that Christ calls us to and enables within us.  A love that is rooted and grounded in the unmerited favour and goodness that God shows to all God has made.  A love that is not based on reciprocity or merit or a transaction.

We have heard about Jesus standing behind/beside/before us.  This morning I want us to consider another way which the Christ-following life is described.  It’s a favourite one of Paul’s expressions, and I know you’ve heard it before.  As a follower of Christ, you are “In Christ.” As followers of Christ, we take part in/participate in/have a sharing in the love and communion of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, which is without beginning and without end! Let us take a moment with that.

What does this look like practically in our lives?  What should it look like?  As we remember Jesus’ words today from Luke 11, it looks like prayer.  Jesus and his followers are on their way to Jerusalem, and it’s like a redemptive parade is going on.  Forgiveness is happening.  Welcomes and inclusion are happening.  Healing and wholeness are happening.  Luke has described Jesus being at prayer, in conversation with his Father at his baptism, before choosing twelve apostles, before his first prophecy of his death and being raised, and at his transfiguration.  Prayer is central to Jesus’ mission, and it is central for us to whom Jesus entrusts his mission.  Jesus has sent out 70 of his followers, instructing them to heal and proclaim the Kingdom of God has come near.  Paul will speak of us as ambassadors for Christ.  Paul will speak of us as living letter of Christ.  How could we ever claim to be any of those things or do any of those things in our own strength?

“He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’” (11:1) 

Prayer is not just something to do on a whim or only when we need something.  Prayer is something we need to learn as students of Jesus, and it’s something we never stop learning. I learned something new about what unceasing prayer or all of life as prayer might look like the Friday before our prayer walk here at church.  I walked the route on my own, and my sole intention was to pray.  I was sorry I hadn’t don’t it sooner in my life.  I encourage us all to do this, whether it’s on our own, in pairs or in groups.  If we’re unable to walk, we could walk paths of memory.  I set aside two hours, and it ended up taking about an hour and 20 minutes, with a stop for coffee.  So often, we’re walking with a destination in mind. The experience opened me up to notice what was going on around me.  The people out walking their dogs.  Birds.  An empty beer can.  People gathered around tables in a restaurant.  Construction workers at work.  People driving.  People on buses.  The glory of creation in Alexander Muir Gardens.  Uninterrupted time to commune with our loving Father. 

Who is at the heart of it all, and with whom we start?  Father.  Loving parent.  Jesus uses the image of the parental relationship, and we know that we get it wrong.  I thank God for parents through whom we first knew unconditional love.  I first learned about unconditional love from my mother, and I thank God for her.  I pray that we will know unconditional love from parents and parental figures in our lives.  We are invited to rest in God in childlike trust in God’s love and goodness.  Father.  “Abba” no doubt if Jesus taught in Aramaic.  That familiar familial name.  We are not to look on prayer as another task or another thing to fit into our already too-full schedule.  It’s an invitation to rest in Him.  It’s a recognition of our ongoing and continual need for God.  What should we say?

Father. We start where we always start.  The focus being on God.  To call God “Father” is to remember the words of deliverance spoken to the pharaoh through Moses and Aaron when Israel was in slavery - “Israel is my son, my firstborn, so let my people go!”  This is our liberating God, our delivering God who brings release to the captive, freedom for the prisoner.  There are two petitions of praise.  Hallowed be your name.  Bring it about that your name is sanctified, that Your ways are made known.  Your kingdom come.  The kingdom of God is here.  The kingdom of God is at hand.  The kingdom of God is a kingdom of love and grace and mercy and forgiveness and justice.  The kingdom of God is here.  The kingdom of God is coming.  May your kingdom come, Lord, in our lives and in the life of our world.  It’s a committal on our part to the kingdom of God over and above all the kingdoms of the world which would demand our allegiance.  

Next, come three requests which recognize that we are people on a journey.  While we are part of that redemptive parade, we need God all along the way.  This is all in first-person plural because prayer is something we never do solo, even when we’re on our own. Bonhoeffer had this to say about prayer – “One who prays never prays alone . . . Always there must be a second person, another, a member of the fellowship, the Body of Christ, indeed, Jesus Christ himself, praying with him, in order that the prayer of the individual may be true prayer.” 

Along the way, we need provision and sustenance.  We need to be provided for.  We need to be sustained.  “Give us our bread for today.”  Physical bread.  Spiritual bread from the Bread of Life.  “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us.”  We are a people on the way.  We haven’t arrived at the perfection of the kingdom to come. We are a people who are daily in need of forgiveness.  Forgive us, Lord, and may we not block your forgiveness from flowing through us and being extended to those around us.  And do not bring us to the time of trial.  All too frequently, the world is a place of trial, of temptation, of persecution.  “Protect us, Lord,” we pray.

Someone has said this about the prayer that Jesus teaches here -  “The community that prays the Lord’s Prayer is, then, a community very conscious of its privileged closeness to God. But it prays the prayer in the world, as part of the world, on behalf of the world, to which it testifies the onset of the kingdom. It is praying for food, for reconciliation, for deliverance from evil, not just for itself but for the entire human family, whose dignity and destiny as children of God it tries to model and proclaim. In short, it prays that the entire human race may return to the hospitable home of the Father.” 

What else could we do but pray this prayer together now?  May God help us to hear it as if for the first time: 

  Father, hallowed be your name.     

     Your kingdom come.     

     Give us each day our daily bread.     

     And forgive us our sins,       

       for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.     

     And do not bring us to the time of trial.

  Amen

Praise. Provision. Penitence. Protection.  It’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s a good list.  Teach us to pray.  It’s something we are always learning.  Prayer is part of being at home with God, and Jesus goes on in our passage to use a couple of images from life at home to speak of how we, as his followers, are called to pray.  He’s spoken about the what, and now it’s about how.  The how, however, is as much about what God is like.

God is like a friend.  God is neither distant nor capricious.  Jesus uses a scene from Galilean village life where it would be unthinkable for you to host visitors, even unexpected ones, without offering them bread.  Imagine going to a neighbour to ask for help when an unexpected guest arrives.  Sleeping situations tended to be communal, and the answer comes back, “Do not bother me, the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.”  The point here is not to compare God to a sleepy neighbour or unwilling helper – we can only take interpretation so far when we’re looking at parables.  The point is the persistence of the friend who is knocking.  “… at least because of his persistence, he will get up and give him whatever he needs.”  The word for persistence is actually shamelessness.  Now there are times when shame can be a good thing.  In an honour/shame culture, shame can help us to do the right thing lest we bring shame on ourselves and family or wider circle.  This would be the sort of shame that the bread-holder might feel if they were to leave their needy neighbour breadless.  Jesus is encouraging in us here what someone has called a “holy boldness.”  Prayer-like insistent knocking.  Prayer for peace; for reconciliation, prayers for deliverance from any one of the number of things from which we and the ones we love and the ones we don’t even know need deliverance.  There is no end to what we need, and there is to be a shamelessness about our coming to God with our needs.  In the middle of questions.  In the middle of doubts.  In the middle of not understanding.  We are called to shameless persistence, and we are called together – even for hermit crabs. Gordon Atkinson is the author of a book called reallifepreacher.com.  He tells a story about asking for prayer requests from the congregation one morning.  His daughter asked for prayer for her sick hermit crab.  Here’s the story -   “As heads bowed, Atkinson thought about the other needs in the congregation: a man whose father just died; a woman whose father abused her for years while she prayed that God would make him stop; the family of a little girl named Julie who died, painfully, of cancer when she was five. ‘All the heads were bowed except mine. I was left standing at the front, wondering how you pray for a hermit crab in the presence of a man who prayed that his daddy would live. How do you pray for a hermit crab while looking at the bowed head of a woman who prayed that her daddy would stop? And what about Julie, God? Exactly what was going on with that situation? . . . Maybe you have complex reasons for taking a hands-off approach. But what grand scheme would have been derailed if you had let her die without pain? If letting Julie die in peace was outside your self-imposed limits, what will you do for a hermit crab that we hear is a little under the weather? . . . You know what got me started praying? The heads. Roy’s head and Chris’s head. All of them. Rows and rows of bowed heads, waiting expectantly . . . . Here were people who would pray for a crab. They loved this little girl that much, and she felt comfortable enough to share the concerns of her heart. Even in the midst of their own unanswered prayers, they were big enough and small enough to pray with their young friend. . . . I am a man who has become a child again, and I tell you, I will pray for just about anything.” 

Ask continually.  Seek continually.  Knock continually, with confident assurance that one on whom we call is good. Consider a father. Consider a mother.  Think of parental love and responsibility and care.  We give and receive it imperfectly, but even we get it.   ^11 “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? ¹² Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? ¹³ If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” 

The first promise of the Holy Spirit in Luke’s Gospel.  We’re moving toward May 2th – Pentecost.  The day we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. To have lived in this promise is to have known the goodness of God.  The invitation is to follow this Christ and to live in this promise every day.  May it be one we all take up. Amen

“Certainly,” replied Chesterton.

“If the risen Christ suddenly appeared at this very moment and stood behind you, what would you do?”

Chesterton looked the reporter squarely in the eye and said, “He is.”

About this story, someone has said, “Is this a mere figure of speech, wishful thinking, a piece of pious rhetoric? No, this truth is the most real fact about our life; it is our life. The Jesus who walked the roads of Judea and Galilee is the One who stands behind us. The Christ of history is the Christ of faith.”

We continue to celebrate pointedly the risen Christ.  We remember the words of the two men in dazzling white clothes who told the group of women on new life morning – “Remember what he told you when he was in Galilee?”  Remember what he told you.  We heard about the risen Christ making himself known in his Word.  We heard about the risen Christ making himself known/being revealed at a table.  We have heard about the risen Christ walking along beside us. “Christ with us” is really the thing that makes going back to Jesus' words (or going to Jesus’ words for the first time, for that matter) so different.  When we remember Jesus’ words, we are not remembering mere teaching, as if Jesus is simply someone with some information or advice to give.

The risen Christ is the power of God.  The risen Christ is the power of love.  Jesus is teaching here in Luke 6.  We call this The Sermon on the Plain, and it’s a lot like Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount.  Not a sermon in the way we’re accustomed to hearing them, but a collection of Jesus' sayings.  Luke 6:17 – “He came down with them and stood on a level place.”  This is after he has chosen his 12 apostles.  “… with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.”  The message is about what it looks like to live life as his follower.  The message is for everyone.  The invitation is for everyone.  The geography of the setting itself is meaningful here.  The place is level.  In the kingdom of God, we all find ourselves on equal footing.  The kingdom of God is not about hierarchies based on gender or class or race, or socioeconomic status.  We all stand equally in need of grace and the mercy of God.  The level place also represents a firm foundation.  At the end of the sermon, Jesus will say that to hear his words and acts on them is like a man who built a house, dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock.  When a flood arose and the river burst against the house, it remained standing.  To hear and not act is like another man who built his house on the ground without a foundation.  Things fall apart.

Jesus is laying out a foundation of what Kingdom life is like.  Jesus is laying out what salvation means, what deliverance means, what grace (the unmerited/undeserved favour of God) looks like.  Salvation does not just point toward a distant future.  Grace is not simply an unattainable goal of which we think, “wouldn’t it be nice.”  Someone has said about salvation in Luke – “ (salvation) embraces life in the present, restoring the integrity of human life, revitalizing human communities, setting the cosmos in order, and commissioning the community of God’s people to put God’s grace into practice among themselves and toward ever-widening circles of others.”

What Jesus is doing in his Sermon on the Plain is not simply laying out a set of rules or a guide to good behaviour – a set of boxes for us to check.  Jesus is laying down a vision for the world that reflects who God is.  He’s laying down a vision for human interaction that reflects God’s vision.  The call to follow Jesus is a call to align ourselves with this man – an alignment that involves the totality of our lives.  All of our lives because this is the good and fitting and proper response in the face of God’s grace.

The women who came to the empty tomb on the first day of the week heard these words, “Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee…”  He meant what he said.  The two disciples with whom Jesus walked along the Emmaus road remembered how their hearts burned within them as Jesus spoke.  The one who stands behind us and beside us and before us. So we remember Jesus’ words.  We’re still listening, and there’s significance in listening. 

“But I say to you that listen,” Jesus starts.  We’re still listening, and there’s significance in listening.  We’ve already heard Jesus speak about hospitality and generosity.  This same hospitality and generosity is to be applied to our relationships.  “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…”  Love your enemies frames this entire passage (v 27, v 35).  Who are our enemies?  Nationally?  Personally?  Those who disagree with us religiously/politically/socially?  It seems more and more in our society that we’re regarding those we disagree with as enemies or objects of hate.  Jesus turns this upside down.  We’re not talking about conjuring up warm feelings toward those who regard us with ill will. When we talk about and practice agape love in the Christ-following life, we talk about and practice love that seeks nothing but the other’s good.  I will seek your good, even when you hate me.   

There’s a novel by an American writer named Kent Haruf called Benediction.  All of his novels take place in a Colorado town called Holt.  In this one, a new firebrand preacher comes from Denver.  In a sermon, Pastor Rob Lyle admits to his congregation in a sermon on the text we’re looking at this morning how difficult it is to follow Jesus’ nonretaliation ethic: “We know the sweet joy of revenge. How it feels good to get even. Oh, that was a nice idea Jesus had. That was a pretty notion, but you can’t love people who do evil. It is neither sensible nor practical. . . . There is no way on earth we can love our enemies. . . . They’ll think they can get away with . . . wickedness and evil because they’ll think we’re weak and afraid. What would the world come to?” But the preacher continues: “What if Jesus wasn’t kidding? What if he wasn’t talking about some never-never land? . . . What if he was thoroughly wise to the world and knew firsthand cruelty and wickedness and evil and hate? . . . And what if, in spite of all that he knew, he still said love your enemies?”

What if?  What would that look like for us?  What would that look like in our world?  Remember his words.  Do good to those who hate you.  Bless those who curse you.  Pray for those who abuse you.  If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.  From anyone who takes away your coat, do not withhold even your shirt.  Give to everyone who begs from you, and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.  Then finally, do to others as you would have them do to you.

We’re invited to catch this vision.  In a world that so often says, “Respect me, and I’ll respect you.”  This is normal, right?  In a world that says, “Hit me, and you’ll regret it,” or “Hit me first, so I don’t get charged with assault.”  None of this is to justify allowing ourselves to be door mats or beaten up or counselling someone to stay in an abusive relationship because look at what Jesus says.  Jesus is talking about a vulnerability and generosity, which is foolish by the world’s standards (and I would add here, look where the world’s standards have brought us).  Followers of Jesus don’t reciprocate/retaliate or base our patterns of behaviour on those who would abuse/victimize/take advantage of.

We are not passive in all of this.  Quite the opposite.  The call from Jesus here is to respond with acts of love and mercy, and generosity which do not take into account reciprocation or retaliation.  Seek the good of those who hate you.  Speak words of grace in response to insults and curses.  Be lavish in our generosity toward those whom we might consider undeserving – and how exactly are we supposed to make the deserving/undeserving call anyway?  Someone has said, “This is no weak…capitulation… to oppressive forces; quite the contrary, it represents a bold move to stop the spiral of violent vengeance in the power of God’s love.”  In the face of one of the greatest evils of the 20^th century, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had this to say, “When evil meets no opposition and encounters no obstacle but only patient endurance, its sting is drawn, and at last it meets an opponent which is more than its match. . . . Then evil cannot find its mark, it can breed no further evil, and is left barren. . . . Evil becomes a spent force when we put up no resistance [and refuse] to pay back the enemy in his own coin. . . . Violence stands condemned by its failure to evoke counter-violence.”

The Kingdom of God is an upside-down Kingdom.  Seeking nothing but the good for those who love us is fine – it beats the alternative, I suppose.  There is a higher love going on in the Kingdom of God, and isn’t our world crying out for a higher love?  “Think about, there must be a higher love,” is how Steve Winwood (and Whitney Houston and Kygo) put it.  Isn’t this what our world is crying out for?  An end to cycles of violence and retaliation and mere reciprocity and transactionalism, which pit us against one another from geopolitics to the morning commute, which leaves us enraged?  “Where’s that higher love I keep thinking of?” as the song goes.

He's behind me.  He’s beside us.  He’s before us.   The one of grace.  The one of unmerited good, of undeserved favour.  Jesus is the one who calls us to his table.  Our family table.  Jesus is the one who calls us to take on the family resemblance.  You know what it’s like to meet someone, and the family to which they belong is unmistakable.  “Be merciful just as your Father is merciful.”  The one we are invited to follow.  The one we are called to welcome in.  The one who did not retaliate when he was struck.  The one who loved us when we were his enemy.  The one who is good to all, who has compassion on all he has made.  The one who came running to meet us when we were far from him. 

The call to a higher love is the call to a love that doesn’t exist in this world without the one who invites us to his table.  To come as a child of God is to not just be forgiven but to gather together as part of an ongoing process in which we are ever more coming to reflect God’s grace, forgiveness and mercy to the world in every interaction – in all we say and do.  May this be true for all those who are listening today and gather around the family table.

Amen 

“In what or whom do we hope?”  Before we answer this question, we need to define what we mean when we talk about hope.  When we talk about hope, we are not talking about something that we would like to happen, as in “I hope you can come to my bbq party next week” or “I hope it doesn’t rain on the day of my bbq party.”  When we speak of hope in the faith, we are not simply speaking of wishing/hoping/planning/dreaming (because I’m on a roll now with the song references).  In 2 Cor 1:7, Paul writes to the church in Corinth, and he says, “Our hope for you is unshaken…”  The word for hope here means “confident expectation of good.”

This is what we mean when we talk about hope.   

The question is, “In what or in whom do we hope?  In what or in whom do we have a confident expectation of good?”  Anyone?  Anything?  Nothing? 

We who follow Christ follow the risen Christ.  We are post-Easter people.  We sing, “In Christ alone, our hope is found, he is my life, my strength, my song/ This cornerstone, this solid ground/ Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.”  Make no mistake, there will be droughts and storms.  There will be times (and we may be in one now) where we are saying along with these two travellers in our story as they walk the way of despair toward Emmaus, “We didn’t think things would turn out this way.”  I didn’t think things would go this way.  I don’t know that things will ever go any differently.  This talk of hope and despair is a serious matter, and we don’t come to God’s Word to be unserious.  This talk of hope and despair is matter of life and death, and this is good because we don’t come to church or engage with the Living Word of God simply to be entertained or distracted or made to feel good about ourselves.  This is serious stuff.  I remember a friend sharing the story of the death of their mother, who was not a woman of faith.  On her deathbed, one of the things my friend’s mother said was, “This isn’t how I expected it to be.”  My friend wasn’t sure what to make of this, “How did she expect it to be?” she asked.  It does speak, however, to a dashing of hope.

So Luke tells the story, full of changes of mood and direction (literally), dramatic irony (where the listener is aware of something the people in the story are not), dramatic revealing of identity, a flurry of action and movement, a joyful sharing of news.  I have to say two things about the story and what it signifies and has signified for the church in terms of what it has to say about the risen Jesus.  This is the first - Jesus is made known/revealed in the Word – in the reading, hearing, exposition of, remembering the Word of God.  On Easter Sunday, we talked about the importance of showing up (just as the women showed up at the tomb), which leaves ourselves open to receive something we perhaps did not expect to receive.  It is the same with coming to the Word of God. Do not let us neglect it. This is the second – Jesus is revealed/made known when we gather around a table in his presence.  Word and Table.  Christ with us.  God with us as we walk along together. As Cleopas and his unnamed companion walk along together.  Let us put ourselves right alongside Cleopas.    “Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem., and talking with each other about all these things that had happened.”  All the things that we marked during Holy Week.  Things did not go the way they expected them to go.  “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” they say, speaking of Jesus.  Their journey away from Jerusalem is one of despair.  It was the end of “confident expectation of good.” 

We get this, don’t we?  The experience which leaves us saying, “I didn’t think things would go this way.”  It might be in our education or a job or a whole career.  It might be with our children.  It might be in a relationship or marriage.  It might be in the death of a relationship of marriage.  It might be in a death.  Death is surely the thing like no other that signals the end of hope, isn’t it?  Isn’t that the way things work?

But… here’s the thing.  Here’s the “but.”  It’s the same “but” that started this chapter.  The same “but” with which we started Easter Sunday before Jesus had many any appearances.  “But on the first day of the week…”  It’s the first day of the week.  It’s resurrection day.  It’s new life day.  It’s the day when the one who is the personification and embodiment of the confident expectation of good has been raised from the condition which had previously signalled the end of all hope – namely death.  Someone has said that what these two travellers had seen in Jerusalem was not the end of hope but the beginning.  Because Christ is risen.  Not only has Christ risen, but he is walking along with them. 

“While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”  Jesus himself came near and went with.  Jesus himself comes near and goes with.  Jesus’ knowledge of and accompaniment with his followers is tender and personal.  Someone has said, “We may feel insignificant and alone, but when we see Jesus fresh from the cosmic trauma of death and resurrection monitoring the footsteps and heartbeats of a despairing couple, we know that we too are known and loved.”

Jesus asks them what they’re talking about.  Let we who follow Jesus take a lesson from his example here when it comes to walking alongside those who are hurting, those who are struggling, those who are despairing and feeling without any expectation of good things.  Jesus doesn’t impose himself or an easy answer upon them.  He comes near, and he says, “Tell me what’s going on.”  “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” asks Cleopas incredulously.  The irony is of course, rich.  Cleopas is speaking to the very person who was at the centre of all that had taken place.  “What things,” replies Jesus, at which point Cleopas tells the story (verses 19-24)

¹⁹ He asked them, ‘What things?’ They replied, ‘The things about Jesus of Nazareth,^[a] who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, ²⁰ and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. ²¹ But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.^[b] Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. ²² Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, ²³ and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. ²⁴ Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’

Then Jesus begins to speak.  We do well to listen to him.  How foolish we are, how slow of heart to believe all the prophets have declared.  This is why we come back to this Word time after time after time.  Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?  This was the plan all along!  “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.”

Why do we come back to this story day after day and week after week?  Jesus makes the story known in light of his death and resurrection.  A story of humanity created to live in loving harmony with God and all of God’s good creation.  A story of rebellion.  A story of God’s promises running through the story of rejection of God and the consequences of this rejection.  A story which is summed up in Joseph’s words to his brothers when, as Pharoah’s second in command to whom they have come for help in a famine, he finally reveals his identity to them. The brothers think he’s going to have them put to death for what he’s done.  This is what Joseph tells them – “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”  What do those words mean to us in the light of Easter and with the risen Christ walking alongside us?  The whole story points to the cross.  Being brought back to God, being delivered from sin and death, being saved from despair, was never about being saved from suffering, but being saved through suffering and death, which would lead to new life on this third day.  It was always about the divine “but.”  Remember, “But God remembered Noah…”  “You intended to harm me, but God…” “My heart and my flesh may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”  I was lost, but God.  I couldn’t see, but God.  I couldn’t forgive, but God.  I was at the end of my resources, but God.  I was in the depths of despair, but God.  I couldn’t believe in any kind of expectation of any sort of good – but God.   Are we still asking why we read this stuff?  The sacrifice provided on Mt. Moriah pointed ahead to him.  The Passover lamb, without a blemish, pointed ahead to him.  The manna provided by God in the wilderness pointed ahead to the Bread of Heaven.  The suffering servant of Isaiah pointed ahead to him.  The one who proclaimed good news to the poor, freedom for the oppressed, recovery of sight to the blind pointed ahead to the one who stood up in his hometown synagogue and read those words and announced, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”  Today.  But on the first day of the week, Jesus walks alongside us and reveals Himself in His word.

What else could we do but invite him in to sit down and eat?  Jesus revealed in his word.  Jesus made known at a table.  Once again, Jesus doesn’t impose himself here.  The importance of extending and accepting invitations.  “As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.  But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’”  The day is almost over, but it’s not over.  The day of the Lord’s favour.  The day of grace.  The day of unmerited favour.  Stay with us, Lord.  May this be the prayer of all our hearts. Word and Table.  I’m coming to an ever greater understanding of the foundational significance of Jesus revealing himself at tables and at the Table.   I have the sense that many of us are, and I am thankful for this.  Jesus the guest becomes Jesus the host.  “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.”  Bread of heaven, feed me ‘til I want no more!  “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight.”

The two walk with Jesus.  The two hear Jesus speak.  The two break bread with Jesus.  Jesus is revealed.  The two then remember.  How often in our lives do we realize the extent of God’s work in our lives when we look back?

“They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning with us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”  I pray, “Lord give us hearts that burn with the fire of your Holy Spirit.  French philosopher/mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote of an experience of God, and he wrote “Fire…Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy” and then written several times like a signature “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ” and then “May I not forget your words.”  John Wesley famously wrote of a conversion experience at a Church of England meeting in Aldersgate, London, put on by the Moravians (the first Protestants) – “ I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.'

When we talk about warm hearts or hearts that are on fire even, we’re not just talking about a relational warmth like we may feel warmly toward one another.  We’re talking about a transforming fire in our hearts that makes us new; that deepens faith; that restores and strengthens hope – the assured expectation of good no matter our circumstances.  We don’t need to call this fire up ourselves, it’s the Holy Spirit in us.  We leave ourselves open to this fire by continuing together (because it wasn’t one person on the road) in God’s word and table, with the risen Jesus before us, behind us, alongside us.  It leads Cleopas and his companion to get back out on the road, but this time they’re heading in the opposite direction in a journey of hope toward Jerusalem.  They went, and they told.  May we live in the same hope and always be ready to tell about it too.  May this be true for all of us. Amen

Let us stand at a distance in the same way that others have stood at a distance in Jesus’ story and in the stories he has told.  Let it be out of humility like that despised tax collector who stood far off, beating his chest and crying out, “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.”  Let it be out of fear as it was for Peter, who followed his arrested teacher at distance after his arrest.  What might it cost me to follow this man?  What might this man demand of me?  Let us remember how we heard that forgiveness was on hand in this kingdom of which he spoke.  Let us remember his words about going and doing mercy with; about sitting and listening at his feet.  Let us remember how he was turning convention and expectation upside down.  Let those words echo – good news to the poor, recovery of sight for the blind, freedom for the oppressed, liberty for the captive, the year of the Lord’s favour.

Favour?  How can we talk about the Lord’s favour on a day like this?  It is a heavy day. We’re familiar with heavy days though if we’ve been around for any significant length of time.  If we haven’t – know that you will know them.  Let us be honest about this.  Let us not miss this day.  Let us never go from the triumph of Palm Sunday to the triumph of Easter Sunday as if life, we're all about going from triumph to triumph.  At least what we might consider our triumphs.  Not even life in Christ.  Not even life with Christ.

Life with Christ was never about us.  Let the words of Jesus shock us out of the belief that life is a movie with us in the starring role.  I’m not talking about giving in to self-doubt or undermining ourselves.  I’m talking about life lived as we have been created to live it – following this man who talked about his followers taking up their cross every day.  Dying to overriding self-interest/self-regard/self-absorption.  Look at the man from Cyrene called Simon actually doing it.  Let us stand far off and we watch and listen, and we see and hear the way of the cross.  The way of the cross leads home is a hymn we used to sing when I was younger.  The way of the cross leads home.  How can we call this day “Good”?  It’s perhaps the biggest paradox of all.  Someone has said that the cross is, at the same time, the most terrible event in human history and the most to be cherished because without it redemption would be impossible.  This paradox – the ugly and ignominious (and shameful and public and dehumanizing) death of the innocent Son of God becomes also an object of devotion and reverence because it is through the cross that we are brought home.  It is through the cross that we are invited to places at the table. 

See Simon from North Africa put into action what Jesus as spoken about.  Taking up his cross.  Following in the way of death. Dying to self and, in so dying, finding life.  Freedom in servitude.  Who would have thought?  What a marvellous mystery and one that isn’t to be explained but to be lived and known.    

Hear the voices calling out – Save yourself!  What kind of King is this?  Isn’t ruling supposed to be all about self-interest?  Isn’t ruling supposed to be about taking care of oneself and one’s family and friends and good luck to everyone else?

The irony here of course, is that Jesus is doing nothing but saving.  What kind of king is this?  Hear Jesus' words as he dies in the same way that he lived – praying, in loving communion with his father.  “Father, forgive them; for they know not what are doing.”  Forgiving so that we might be brought into loving communion with God, creator of all things through Jesus, the author of life and in the Spirit who delighted and rejoiced as all things were made.  Creation itself will go dark on this day.    

Before that, let us hear the voices of those who are dying on either side of him.  The choice that is always before us is mocking and scoffing and derision or adoration and trust.  Hear the words, “We are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.”  Let us hear those words and be thankful. 

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  “According to your steadfast love, remember me…O Lord,” sang the Psalmist.  “Look on the misery of your servant and remember me,” prayed Hannah.  “Please remember me, O God,” prayed Samson.  Jesus, remember me. Not simply a prayer that God would call us to mind but that our lives would be touched by the living God.  A prayer which is accepting of Jesus' invitation to his kingdom (to his table), which is coming and which is here.  A prayer recognizing that to be saved is to live in the presence of God in a kingdom which goes beyond space and time or even life or death. 

Hear the words that Jesus repeats from the Psalmist.  Words of trust and union.  “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.”  Listen to the words of the Psalm and let us make this our prayer today – “In you, O Lord, I seek refuge; do not let me be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me.  Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily. Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me. You are indeed my rock and my fortress; for your name’s sake, lead me and guide me, take me out of the net that is hidden for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hands I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.”

Let us stand afar off and watch but do not let us stay afar off.  Let us come near this place of grace and mercy today together.  Let us proclaim his death together.  Not a life that was taken.  Not a life that was lost.  A life that was given so that all may know life and light.  May God give us all accepting hearts this Good day.

Amen

As you saw, at that point one of the children would be asked to go look behind the pulpit or some other out-of-the-way place to find a basket of chocolate eggs.  The thing is, even a child understands the significance of being surprised.  Do we get beyond that though, when we’ve lived through a few things?  Do we get beyond the capacity to be surprised when we’ve been around for a while; when memories of what it meant to know wonder and delight fade?  The capacity for astonishment and wonder.  The ability to imagine something new.  The ability to imagine ourselves made new.  Do we say with the ancient writer, “There is nothing new under the sun”?  One of the things we learn from the story recorded by Luke here is that the resurrection was not an anticipated event it catches everyone by surprise.  “What is going to make a difference?” we might ask.  “Is anything going to make a difference?” we might ask.  Is anything going to make a difference?  Are we so set in a routine or mindset about how things normally happen that we’re jaded or that we’re missing what God is doing or that we’ve forgotten about God’s promises?  Might God’s promises be made known to us in surprising ways?  Could we be surprised this Easter Sunday 2023?

This is interesting.  The books of the New Testament were not written in the order that we have them in our Bibles.  It is generally accepted that Paul’s letters were the first to be written down and distributed, starting from the late 40’s.  Paul’s 1^st letter to the Corinthians is generally thought to have been written in the early 50s.  The four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, John – came a couple of decades later.  We can’t be 100% on dates and you may be wondering rightly why I’m bringing any of this up at all on this celebratory day.  I want us to take a look at how Paul tells of the good news of Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15 and notice something. 

  Now I should remind you, brothers and sisters,^[a] of the good news^[b] that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, ² through which also you are being saved if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain.

³ For I handed on to you as of first importance what I, in turn, had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, ⁴ and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. ⁶ Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters^[c] at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.^[d] 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. ⁸ Last of all, as to someone untimely born, he appeared also to me.

1. Raised.  Appeared.  Why are we looking at this story as Luke tells it?  What might God have to say to our hearts through it?

I wonder how we’re approaching Easter.  Are we happy/excited/mourning/fearful/perplexed?  One thing you cannot accuse us of around Blytwood is shying away from reality.  Whether it’s in the form of a head-in-the-sand-type pose or toxic positivity.  We’re not called to these things as followers of Christ.  These women who came to the tomb that first Easter morning were in mourning.  It was early dawn – literally deep dawn.  It was darkness on the edge of light.  Light was beginning to break and it was enough light to let them see something.

The women who had come with him from Galilee have not left him.  Their response to Jesus even now continues to be one of devotion.  They have shown up and left themselves open to receive something that they don’t yet know they’re going to receive.  We have all shown up today and there’s a significance in showing up and leaving ourselves open to receive something.

They found the stone rolled away. When they went in, they did not find the body.  Now an empty tomb is no proof of anything and we’re not here to prove anything this morning.  Faith is not the result of a deductive chain or a successful argument.  Faith is, as someone has said, a decision of trust based on a declared truth.  We are here this morning to declare the truth.  We’re not here this morning to celebrate spring.  We’re not here to simply celebrate new birth and flowers and buds on the trees (though we like these things and they remind us of other things).  We’re not here to celebrate a subjective inner experience that a bunch of people had some time after their teacher had been executed or to celebrate wise teaching from a first-century teacher and follow that teaching.

We’re here to celebrate and proclaim this.  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed! Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!

We’re in God’s presence here.  We are in the presence of something beyond ourselves this morning, just as these women were.  We know this is the case whenever a couple of people appear in white or dazzling clothes.  Dazzling! When the figures in white show up, things are happening.  When the clothes are dazzling, something is going down.  There’s something happening here indeed.  The women react in a fitting and a proper way when confronted with the divine – they bow their faces to the ground.

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” is the question. And then the news.  The news that we are marking today. 

“He is not here but has risen.  Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.”  Remember how he told you what the plan was?  How the Son of Man must… Throughout Luke, Jesus has been speaking of what must happen.  “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also…”  “I must stay at your house today.”  Jesus executing the plan.  Jesus handing himself over.

Just as he told you.  What he said he was going to do, he did. You know what one of the really wonderful thing is about being in church today?  We have a chance to do the same thing that these women did over 2,000 years ago.  Listen again to v 8.  “Then they remembered his words.” 

Very often this is how faith works.  You hear something that might not have very much meaning until later when you remember it.  Someone has said that faith does not usually move from promise to fulfillment, but from fulfillment to promise.  In other words, it is not usually in hearing a promise that we come to faith, and then see the fulfillment of that promise – more often than not we come to faith or a deepening of our faith in knowing the fulfillment of a promise and then looking back and remembering the promise.

So it was for these women.  They remembered the promise. “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” 

They saw the promise fulfilled and they remembered it.  If you’ve been following Christ for any length of time you understand what I’m saying.  What are the things that Christ promised?  Let us remember his words together.  Words from Luke’s Gospel.  “I do choose.  Be made clean.”  “Follow me.”  “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.”  “Your sins are forgiven… Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”  Let us remember his words.  Let us remember his promise.  “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”  “As the Father has loved me, so love I you.”  “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”  Is it any wonder this is called the good news?  What did you know of those promises when you first took up Jesus’ call to follow him, to call Jesus Lord?  How have you seen them fulfilled in your life and in the lives of those around you?  What has this meant to your faith?  To step out in faith and follow the risen Lord Jesus Christ is to know his promises fulfilled in our lives.  It is to trust one who has proven himself to be more worthy of our trust than we could imagine or explain.

These women remember.  They make their choice.  They choose well.  As is so often the case, the women are far out ahead of the men.  Luke names them.  The first to tell the news that has been reported now for over 2,000 years.  Mary Magdalene. Joanna.  Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them.  They went and tell all this to the eleven and to all the rest.  All the rest.  Let’s include ourselves in that number.  Because the grave is empty and we’re hearing the news too. 

Let’s ask ourselves a question.  What are we going to do with this empty tomb?

The Bible doesn’t try to sugarcoat anything and our story doesn’t have everyone believing and going happily on their way.  Our story shows the weight that resurrection puts on faith.  We’re talking about Jesus who has died and whom God has raised.  If that hasn’t happened then we are of all people the most to be pitied and there’s really not much point about talking about the fact that he was born in a manger because he might as well have been born in the back of a cab for all it matters. We’re not children anymore.  We’ve known something of life and all that life brings and has brought and we might even have some sort of idea of what it could bring.  What do we do with this?  The women are reporting everything.  The message is he is risen.  “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”  This is another possibility of course and I’m not naïve enough to think we’re all on the same page on the Jesus thing here.  It’s an idle tale.  Same word that describes delirium.  The women are delirious.  It’s an old wives’ tale. I read a novel recently where two women are talking about the phrase old wives' tale after they’ve just experienced the restorative nature of chicken soup.  One says “It’s not just an old wives’ tale about chicken soup.”  The other responds, “I hate that phrase… it’s so hateful and sexist and ageist when you think about it.  ‘Old wives’ tale’ means something that’s untrue or not scientifically proven?  ‘Old wives’ tale is basically a way of saying ignore everything that dumb old woman says… I hadn’t thought of it that way either.  Not until I became an old wife myself.”  I can’t prove any of this to you.  I can’t explain to you what it means in your life to find life in giving our lives over to the risen Christ who loves us and loved us to the end, even unto death.  If you’ve experienced the risen Christ you know what I’m talking about.  If you haven’t I invite you to experience him this morning.  Make Easter 2023 the Easter where everything changed.  Pray I want to know those promises.  Promises of forgiveness.  Of accompaniment.  Of a new heart. Of peace.  Of rest. Of life with Christ as my foundation, my centre, my king.

Our passage ends.  Peter got up and ran to the tomb.  He stooped down, looked in, saw the linen cloths by themselves, and went home, amazed at what had happened.  There’s very little immediate effect, but there will be effects.  The story didn’t end and it hasn’t ended and we’ll keep telling it and asking God to help us live it.  Sin and death have done the worst thing they could do.  God used their power against them like a judo champ.  God took death’s best shot and rolled it over (like the stone was rolled away) in self-giving love to show that the glory of God (majesty of this King) would be displayed in self-giving love.  Death defeated.  Nothing would ever be the same and nothing need ever be the same for us.

Nobody expected it. Nobody expected this God of the unexpected who does life-changing things.  World-changing things.  Things we could never have imagined.  Things we could never have found within ourselves.  Things we could never have done ourselves.  Ways that we have loved.  Ways that we have forgiven.  Ways that we have grieved.  Ways that we have mourned.  Ways that we have celebrated.  We say this morning “Thank you risen Christ for your grace.  Thank you for our love for us and all you have made.  Help me to live in you and show and tell of you.”   May this be the prayer of our hearts, and may this be true for us all dear friends.  Amen.

That young boy was speaking an important theological truth.  I know we often talk about following Jesus and compare it to a journey.  It’s a great and familiar image.  We are people who are on a journey, pilgrim people going along in a caravan toward the holy city on the mountain toward which we travel.  It’s a great image and is built right into the concept of following.

This morning we’re looking at a different image – one in which less motion is involved.  It’s a joyful image too.  The reign of God is like a party.  The reign of God is like a banquet.  Life in the kingdom of God is like a party.  What kind of party is it?  Let us look at this scene – another table scene- with Jesus on his way to Jerusalem and ask for God’s help as we do.

If there ever comes a time when you are remembering me, I hope one of the things you’ll remember is something like, “Man, that Pastor David talked a lot about eating together, and really liked for us to be eating together too!”  I hope this will be the case.   About this Gospel of Luke, someone has said, “Nothing can be for Luke more serious than a dining table.”  We have already heard truths about God being made known at a table.  The Eucharist – the thanksgiving meal – occurs at a table.  After his being raised, Jesus will be made known to two followers at a table (after they’ve been travelling with him – so there are both images in one story).  It is while eating with his followers that Jesus promises the Holy Spirit in Luke’s second volume of Acts – the continuing work of Jesus through the Holy Spirit in his church.

Wonderful!  Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and along the way, he stops to eat a meal at the house of a leader of the Pharisees on the Sabbath.  They were watching him closely, and he was watching them.  Truths about God and the reign of God are revealed in our everyday.  At God’s banquet table, God is both inviting host and invited guest (remember, “Listen!  I am standing at the door knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and eat with you, and you with me.” Rev 3:20)  We are at the same time guests and hosts at the banquet of God, in the reign of God.

So Jesus has a word for guests.  Jesus’ table talk and I have to say that Jesus is stirring things up.  He’s noticing something.  There’s no seating chart here, and the invited guests are jostling for the places closest to the host – the places of honour.  “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet,” Jesus tells them, “Do not sit down at the place of honour, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would take the lower place.” (8-9)

Jesus is much more than a mere moralist.  Jesus is much more than a first-century etiquette columnist.  He’s not just saying, “Make sure you pay attention to seating charts when you go to a wedding.  Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be if you decided you warranted a place at the table right beside the head table and had to be removed from it when the people assigned to those seats showed up.  Jesus is teaching a great truth here about the reign of God.  He's not saying, “Do this so you can be first!” which might result in a mad rush for the lowest spots so we can be first!  Remember those words that Mary sang – “He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts and lifted up the lowly.”  We’re not often in a situation around a dinner where people are jostling for places in our day.  Someone has compared the “me first” attitude, which is reflected in Jesus’ parable, to getting off an airplane.  What is it with getting off airplanes?  I haven’t flown in a while, but I imagine this still happens.  There will invariably be people who ignore the “Stay seated until fasten seatbelt sign is turned off” instruction.  They will collect their overhead luggage and start making their way up the still-swaying plane so that they might be first off.  There may be a reason for this, of course, connecting flights.  How often does this betray an “I am first, and my firstness is the number one thing for me” mentality?  It also makes it impossible for those who have waited to stand up and get your overhead luggage off! Those who exalt themselves (or lift themselves up) will be humbled.  This is what God does.  Those who humble themselves will be exalted (or lifted up).  The same words that Jesus will say in the story about the self-righteous Pharisee who prayed, “Thank God I am not like him!” and the lowly tax collector who stood far off and prayed, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.”  From whom does our righteousness come?  From whom does our honour come?  Our own striving?  Our own clambering for the best seats/spaces that reflect our own sense of importance? 

Or do they come from God, who humbled himself even to the death toward which Jesus is moving, and we are moving along with him?  Lowly, Jesus who will ignore cries and taunts of “Save yourself!” and, in so doing, will save all.  This is his table talk, and he’s stirring things up.

Jesus stirs things up even more with a word for hosts.  “He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’”

I don’t believe Jesus is ruling out ever having your family over for dinner here or those who have the capacity to reciprocate.  Let us not make reciprocating the point, though.  How many times are we leaving someone’s house after having shared a meal, and we say, “Oh, we’ll have to have you over sometime!”  One preacher tells of preaching a sermon on this passage, and he and his wife receiving three dinner invitations within a week.  He says, “Which category of guest we came into we were too polite – or anxious – to ask.”  Do not let our hospitable spaces be primarily about reciprocity or quid pro quos or “What’s in this for me.”  Invite those who cannot repay you.

In inviting us to his banquet table, God has done something for us which we could never repay, and we’re not expected to.  We need only accept the invitation, and the only thing we need to bring along is a humble recognition of our need for God.  “What can I bring?” is the question that is often asked when dinner invitations are extended, and the answer we like to give is “Just bring yourself.” (Along with a host/hostess gift if you are that way inclined)

In Hebrews 13:1-2a we read, “Continue in mutual love.  Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers…”  We mustn’t leave this up to the professionals – hospitality professionals or religious professionals.  The word that’s translated as hospitality here is literally “love of the stranger.”  Continue in the love of one another that looks like something.  Do not neglect to show the love of the stranger to strangers.  “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me,” said Jesus in another story.  In a world where so many relationships are so full of self-interest and/or transactional, Jesus says that in the reign of God, things are upside down/right side up.  In Luke’s second volume, an enraged crowd in Thessalonica will drag Jason and some other followers of Jesus in front of the city authorities, and they’ll say, “These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also…”(Acts 17:6) May God grant that the same would be said of us.  The call here seems very plain and very clear.  We are called not only to provide for the needs of those who our society pushes to the margins, the forgotten, the outsider, the other but we are called to sit down around a table with them.  We had our second meeting of the year with the CBOQ leaders and churches who are involved in the CBOQ Revitalization initiative.  We were talking about creating a hospitable space where conversations can happen.  Hospitable space where the reign of God is made known.  Hospitable space where Jesus is encountered in the stranger, in the sick, in the prisoner, in the naked need of others.

What might this look like in our individual lives?  We may have the chance to invite poor/crippled/lame/blind into our houses.  If we do and we’re married, just make sure you speak about it with your spouse first (I learned that lesson).  What might inviting the poor/crippled/lame/blind look like for us as a church?  I look back over 12 years of my own ministry with you.  I know what God has put into our hearts when it comes to inviting.  People sitting in the sanctuary or on the front lawn on the first Wednesday of each month.  Young people from Horizons For Youth enjoying pizza every other Thursday, sitting with us around a table.  Saturday nights in the winter in the gym.  The pandemic brought everything to a crashing halt, along with a lot of other things, and I mourn that.  We’ve seen a resumption in the creation of hospitable space each Saturday at Seeds of Hope, and we’re thankful for this.  We should be praying for those people involved in that ministry in the same way we pray for our mission partners in other countries. The question that I want us to approach prayerfully together now is, “What does it mean to go and do Jesus’ words here?”  Even If it might make us uncomfortable.  We enjoy our banquets too, and we’re called to gather around tables too, but don’t let it stop there.  Jesus’ words must have made those gathered in that Pharisee’s house uncomfortable.  In the same way, we’d be uncomfortable if someone stood up at one of our next church lunches and said, “How are we sitting down with the poor/crippled/lame/blind?

So someone calls out, “Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!”  We said last week that the kingdom of God is not simply about platitudes or slogans.  We said last week that the question for Jesus is not so much whether we know the right answers as whether or not we do them.  Jesus tells a story about an invitation to a banquet.  These were two-step invitations.  The first a kind of “save the date,” and the second is on the day of the party.  The day of the party comes, and the invited guests can’t make it.  Life gets in the way. Land.  Commerce.  Family.  The poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame are sought.  The lost are sought.  All of us.  People are compelled to come in.  There’s no coercion here, though.  I experienced something about being compelled to come in when Nicole and I were dropping her mother off to visit a Greek family she had known in Castoria one Sunday after church.  The grandfather came out to the car and said, “Come in and join us!”  I said we’d love to but had to get home/rest/do whatever.  He took me by the arm through the car window.  We need to be taken by the hand sometimes.  People aren’t used to invitations that are based on nothing but self-giving love and mercy and forgiveness.  There will be unexpected people at this banquet, and the expectantly presumptuous or self-righteous may find themselves left out. Of course, the invitation is still before us.  To accept Jesus’ invitation is to live life in expectation of this banquet, to turn social hierarchies upside down.  God has welcomed us; let us be God’s welcoming people.  What that young boy at summer camp said was so true.  “This is like a party!”  May our generous and grace-filled God help us all to be generous and grace-filled hosts and guests. Amen

This is a story about mercy.  Could we be surprised by mercy today?  Let’s ask for God’s help as we look at it.

When we come to Luke 10, Jesus’ ministry in Galilee has ended.  He has set his face toward Jerusalem.  He has sent out seventy followers to go ahead of him and make the kingdom of God known.  The question of what it means to be a follower of Jesus here is very much at the forefront of things.  Jesus tells a story in our text, at the end of which he says, “go and do.”  Going and doing are important.  Following our text is a story about a woman who sits at his feet and listens (which we may come too).  Sitting and listening.  Going and doing.  There is a time for each.  They’re not to be helped in opposition to each other.  What we believe and what we are called to do are not to be held in opposition to each other either.  In his letter to the Galatians, Paul tells them that in Christ Jesus, “the only thing that counts is faith working through love.” (Gal 5:6)

Love is the answer, but we mustn’t ever get glib about it.  There’s nothing easy about this answer.  Of course, we haven’t even talked about the question yet.  Jesus has been rejoicing about faith.  “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (10:22)

“Just then, a lawyer stood up to test Jesus, ‘Teacher’, he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life.’”  This man was an expert in the law of Moses.  He’s asking a good question, though not for the right reason.  The question is good, and it’s a big one.  What is the life all about?  What is the meaning and purpose of life? What is the goal of life?  Excellent question and one we all do well to pose and consider!

Of course, in the kingdom of God, we’re not simply about posing and considering.  Someone once asked a Rabbi, “Why do you Rabbis always answer a question with another question?”  The Rabbi responded, “Why shouldn’t we answer a question with another question?”  There aren’t many (maybe aren’t any) easy answers in the kingdom of God, and we’re never called to glibness or flippancy or platitudes.  Jesus replies in true rabbinical style with another question.  “What is written in the law?  What do you read there?” It’s been said that the questions and answers are the most important thing that are happening in this story, and we’ll see in a while how Jesus is going to turn a question upside down.  The lawyer comes back with a good answer.  We call it the law of love.  “You shall love the Lord with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.”

Good!  Do this, and you will live.  Do this, and you will know life lived in the love of God now and always.  Love of God that involves every aspect of our being.  Totalizing love of God which is rooted and grounded in God’s love for us which we can think of vertically that flows from us horizontally to others.

The thing about the kingdom of God is it’s not simply about having the right answers.  Having the right answers does not mean that one knows God.  We’re not merely speculating or theorizing in the kingdom of God.  Jesus has said that those who call him “Lord Lord” and do not do what he tells are like a man who built his house without a foundation.  A house that is not much good for anything.  Jesus has said that his mother and his brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.   Someone has said that the question for Jesus is not so much what one must do but whether one does it. The lawyer wants to keep talking, keep questioning.  I can be down with the loving God part, but let’s put some parameters around this whole neighbour thing.  “Who is my neighbour?”  Let’s define this “neighbour” thing.  Of course, to define who is a neighbour means that you’ll be defining who isn’t a neighbour.  The lawyer wants to define who is the object of love and mercy because surely this love and mercy thing is not to extend to everyone.  Let’s put some boundaries around this thing.  I want to do this on my own terms, so let’s keep talking. “Who is my neighbour?”

Jesus’ response here comes In the form of a story.  The road from Jerusalem to Jericho descended from around 780m or 2500 ft to around -250m or -780 ft.  This is why we always talk about going up to Jerusalem.  It was full of blind turns and plenty of places from which one could be ambushed.  “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.”  The man was helpless.  The man was in a position from which he could not hope to extricate himself.  Picture the scene.  Picture ourselves in the scene.  Unable, maybe even to call out.  Footsteps are heard.  Hope stirs.  Footsteps recede into the distance on the other side of the road.  The same thing happens again.  A priest and a Levite.  A priest and a kind of priest’s assistant, no doubt heading home after finishing off a tour of duty at the Temple in Jerusalem.  The crowd might have nodded knowingly, as religious leaders often don’t have the best of reputations.  In it for themselves.  Looking for their own advantage or advancement.  The crowd might have been waiting for the classic turn, which often comes when groups of three people appear in a story or a joke (like the one about the priest, the rabbi, and the Baptist pastor).  The crowd might have been waiting for the common but righteous Israelite who would come along and show those religious leaders what love and mercy looked like.

But a Samaritan…  A people who were considered to be the result of the mixing of the northern tribes of Israel and the conquering Assyrians hundreds of years before.  A people who considered themselves the true heirs of the promises made to Abraham.  Jews and Samaritans would have encountered each other all the time, passed by each other on roads or passed through each other’s villages.  It certainly wasn’t a matter of stopping, though.  “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” asked a woman of Samaria of Jesus one day at a well.   

Oh my goodness, he’s going to stop!  I want us to note a detail here in the story.  The Samaritan came near him.  He came near, and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. Moved with compassion (splangnizomai – that gut-wrenching compassion which is used to describe the way Jesus feels compassion).  “He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them (again with the oil).  Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.  The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him, and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’”

We were talking about mercy last week too.  We who follow this Jesus cannot hear this story without seeing ourselves at the side of the road, lying helpless and half dead.  Jesus came near us, noticed us, helped us. Jesus comes near us, notices us, restores us.  If we don’t follow Jesus and we feel like we’re lying half-dead at the side of the road – there is mercy with Jesus.  There is peace with Jesus.  There is wholeness with Jesus.  Showing mercy makes us vulnerable, and God loves us vulnerably.  God is humble enough to allow the possibility that we might reject God’s mercy altogether.  Mercy is vulnerable.  Mercy gets down in the ditch.  It’s never simply a question of “a hand up rather than a hand out” with God.  Mercy gets down in the ditch.  Mercy gets bloody.  Mercy walks while the other rides.  Mercy risks being cheated.  Mercy risks never being appreciated.  Mercy risks being hated even.  “What do you mean a Samaritan touched me?” might well have been the response on the part of this man once he recovered enough to be told the story.

Let the story land.  Let’s sit with the story for a few moments as those original listeners must have sat with the story as they sat with the man who was God’s mercy among us.  Let’s hear Jesus ask us the question as he once again responds with a question.  We don’t need easy answers, after all.  What we need (what I need) is to capture or recapture the vision of God for the people of God when it comes to being a people who not only hear Jesus’ words but do them.  NT Wright put it like this – “No church, no Christian can remain content with easy definitions which allow us to watch most of the world lying half-dead in the road.”

So let’s hear Jesus’ question now.  “Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  Jesus has turned the question around.  The question is not about who is deserving of mercy.  The question is not about the object of mercy.  The question is about the subject, and Jesus figuratively holds up a mirror before each and every one of us.  Who are we becoming?  What are we becoming?  “Which of these three became a neighbour to the man…” is the sense of the original Greek here.  The answer comes back, “The one who showed him mercy.”  Literally, “the one who did mercy with him.”

Because mercy is not simply a feeling, no more than love.  Mercy is something that we do, and we do it with.  Remember the first thing the Samaritan did.  He came near.  He came alongside.  The very definition of a neighbour is being alongside, yes?  The Samaritan became a neighbour to the one lying half-dead.  Someone has said that Jesus is showing “… one does not have a neighbour, I make myself someone’s neighbour… the Gospel would totally condemn the modern world . . . denounce it as a world without the neighbour, the dehumanized world of abstract, anonymous and distant relationships.” 

To whom is God calling us to come alongside?  In our lives individually, in our families, in our church life?   To whom is God calling us to come alongside?  For the last three and a half months, mercy has looked like meals and clothing on St. Joseph’s St. every Saturday.  What might it look like after April?  Are we called to come alongside young people with our brother Matt or at Horizons For Youth?

We’re called to sit and listen.  We’ve done that, and we’ll continue to.  We’re called to go and do.  Jesus’ last words in this section.  All based in and grounded in the mercy that has been shown to us in Christ Jesus.  Mercy and love is not to be limited by category and is not to be dependent on questions.  Whoever needs us is my neighbour.  Whomever at any given time and place we can help with active love and mercy is our neighbour, and we are theirs.  May God plant these truths deep within our hearts, and may this be true for all who hear these words.

Amen

This is a story about repentance.  This is the definition of repentance that we looked at on the 1^st Sunday of Lent – “Repentance is the fruit of a heart yielded to God. Not just regret because of sin’s consequences. Not merely remorse, the emotional sorrow of getting caught in sin. Repentance is an ongoing, conscious decision to turn away from sin and pursue God’s plans. Therefore, repentance, like fruit, can be seen.”  The fruit that we can see in this story is love.  It’s a story about a response on this unnamed woman’s part that is born out of love.  It’s a story that answers the question, “What is the good and right and fitting and proper response to Jesus as the agent of God’s love and mercy?”  It is also a story about mercy, about forgiveness.

I want to propose a way of seeing this story and a way of seeing this woman this morning.  It goes against the title for the story that we often see.  One writer calls it “Jesus Anointed By A Sinful Woman.”  The NRSV Bible entitles it to “A Sinful Woman Forgiven.”  “The Pardon of a Sinful Woman,” says the NAB.  “A Sinful Woman Forgiven,” says the Harper Collins Study Bible.  La Nueva Bible Latinoamericana calls the story “La mujer pecadora de Magdala” – confusing matters entirely.  You sense a theme going on here.  Ironically these titles are putting the focus in much the same place that Simon puts the focus – on this woman’s sinfulness.  I’m not saying that sin is not a part of this story.  Sin is a part of all our stories.  We looked last week at sin, a power from which we need to be freed.  How do we see what we call sin or wrongdoing, or doing wrong, or putting something else in the place of God as the object of our worship and service (very often, this object is ourself)?  We need to take this question seriously.  Too often in our world, doing wrong is seen as a result simply of a mistake or bad choice or all the stress I am under or lack of self-care on my part.  How do we view going wrong?  Sin is involved in this story as it’s involved in all our stories.  Is it the main part?  Do we see this woman?

Here's how I propose we consider our story this morning.  It has to do with the good and fitting response to the mercy and acceptance of Jesus.  May it be our response too.  It might even lead us to get down at his feet and weep for love and joy in response to the forgiveness of God. Or maybe we’re too proud for that.  Maybe we’ve become complacent in the face of God’s mercy.  We’ve become too used to it to the point where we pretty much ignore it entirely.

I propose we title this story as someone has titled it.  “The Woman Who Loved Much.”  Let’s ask for God’s help as we look at her story.

Last week we heard Jesus’ mission statement.  His inaugural address.  His description of what he would be doing. Good news to the poor.  Release to the captives.  Recovery of sight to the blind. To let the oppressed go free.  To proclaim in his words and in his actions the year of the Lord’s favour.  The time of unmerited mercy and forgiveness that we call grace.  Jesus continues his work in Galilee.  Teaching.  Healing.  Calling.  Preaching.  We see positive and negative responses.  Simon Peter tells Jesus, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”   Jesus doesn’t go anywhere.  Jesus tells him, “Don’t be afraid; from now on, you will be catching people.  Simon Peter and his brother Andrew and another set of brothers (James and John) follow him.  We see responses of faith and trust.  A man covered in leprosy tells Jesus, “Lord if you choose, you can make me clean.” Boundaries are crossed.  In chapter 7, the servant of a Roman centurion is healed, and Jesus wonders at the centurion’s faith.  Life is springing from death.  People are responding positively, negatively, and questioningly.  From prison, cousin John sends two of his followers to Jesus to ask this question – “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  In other words – what should our response to you be?  Which brings us to our story, in which there are two responses to Jesus.  Two responses to forgiveness.  I don’t want us to be too too hard on Simon the Pharisee.  Don’t let us respond to him by saying, “Thank God I’m not like that self-righteous Pharisee.”  We don’t know how it turned out for him.  The story is open-ended.  He was interested in Jesus, and this is a start.  We can presume the same can be said for anyone hearing this story today.  “One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went to the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table.”  The importance of extending and accepting invitations.  Jesus was open to the encounter too.  The second of 7 banquets with Jesus in Luke.  Meeting Jesus at a table.  Truths about Jesus being revealed at a table.  Jesus takes his place at the table.  It wasn’t the sort of table and chairs situation that we’re used to.  Guests around the table would recline, propping themselves up on one elbow with their legs extended out behind them.  The woman wasn’t crawling around under the table (in the same way I used to do as a child after asking to be excused from dinner and being hemmed in).  It’s not a question of trespassing in the story.  Our notion of public and private space was not so much the thing in first-century Galilee.  Space was much more open, and people were much more free about entering houses. 

The third person in our story is then introduced.  A woman in the city.  Who was a sinner.  I want us to note the past tense there.  Simon wanted to hang the label of “sinner” on this woman.  This woman had been forgiven by Jesus.  This woman knew forgiveness.  Her sins were many.  So were mine.  So were yours.  We don’t know what her sins were.  There is much speculation.  Someone has pointed out that there is not that much speculation about Simon Peter’s sins when he says, “Get away from Lord, for I am a sinful man.”  Many commentators and interpreters go straight to labelling her a prostitute, which maybe says more about us than about her.  Contact with Gentiles would have rendered someone sinful and unclean and excluded in this setting.  She could have been involved with dyeing textiles.  She could have been a midwife. 

None of this is the point, though.  She had been categorized/labelled.  This categorization meant she was out of bounds when it came to polite society.  She had been in the grip of something from which she was unable to extricate herself.  Then she met had met Jesus.  Her sins, which were many, have been forgiven.  She had heard and accepted the call to turn, to follow.  What we might imagine is a neon sign above her head with an arrow pointing toward her, and the sign simply says “Forgiven.”

It does us well to sit with ideas like this one – there is forgiveness here.  There is mercy here in the kingdom of God.  We were talking about Jesus’ words of good news from the Nazareth synagogue in one of our small groups this week.  Good news to the poor.  Release to the captives.  Recovery of sight to the blind.  Freedom for the oppressed.  The year of the Lord’s favour/grace/mercy/forgiveness.  May we not become used to God forgiving or complacent about it or take it for granted or as a matter of course.  We asked ourselves the question, “What have Jesus’ words of good news meant in your life?”  From what have you been freed?  From what have you been released?  I’ve been released from addiction, from self-destructive self-interested behaviour, from the desire for payback, and from wallowing in the holding of a grudge.  None of that came from me.  I can tell you because I know myself.  Any label that I or others wanted to put on me has been replaced by one that says “Forgiven.”  I pray you can say the same.  If you can’t know that Jesus’ accepting hand is held out. Do you see this woman?  She had taken Jesus’ hand, and her response was one of love and devotion.  She goes into the house with a jar of ointment.  When she gets to Jesus, she stands behind him, and she is overcome.  She begins to weep to the point where Jesus’ feet are wet with her tears.  She begins to bathe them and dry them with her hair and kiss them and anoint them with the ointment.

Do you see this woman?  She loves much.  May God give us each the same kind of wonder and adoration in the light of God’s mercy.  No matter what she had done, the only thing this woman needed to come to Jesus was an awareness of her need for him.  No matter what we have done, the only qualification we need to come to Jesus is an awareness of our need for him.  Nothing we have done; no label that we have carried; no category into which we have been placed; is too much for the mercy of God.

Don’t let any religious leader tell you otherwise.  The religious leader in the story (the one who’s not Jesus) does not acquit himself very well.  At times we don’t acquit ourselves very well.  At times great damage has been done.  Let’s not stand in judgement on Simon, though, as we don’t know how his story ended.  We read earlier in this chapter that the Pharisees and the lawyers refused to be baptized by John, and in so doing, they rejected God’s purpose for themselves.  We have heard something about God’s purposes from Mary back in chapter 1.  Scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  Lifting up the lowly.  Here we see both of these things happening.  “If this man were a prophet,” thinks Simon, “he would know who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him – that she is a sinner.”  If we see ourselves as the source of our goodness, it tends to make us look down on others that we see as less good.  Is this not why, in a culture which prides itself on being accepting and non-judgemental, we just love shaming people online.  Let me record this bad behaviour and put it in a reel, it will go viral.  The internet will be divided.  We love this stuff.  What kind of person does that?  They refused to switch seats on a plane!?  Let me record this…

Don’t you know what kind of woman this is?  Self-righteousness is not just for Pharisees or religious leaders or religious people.  Someone has said this about the woman and Simon – “Her past sins… are barriers to (her) inclusion in the community. Yet Jesus is not bound by the world’s standards. He operates according to the inverted ethos of God’s kingdom, where the poor, the outcast, and the lowly are embraced by God’s mercy. Their faith, born out of desperation, exhibits an insight absent from those well-ensconced in the religious establishment of the day. In the end, self-righteousness may turn out to be the most impenetrable barrier between a person and God’s salvation.”

All is not lost, however.  Jesus is there, after all.  All is not lost!  “Simon,” says Jesus, “I have something to say to you…  A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty (500 days wages, 50 days wages). When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?”  The answer comes back, “I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the greater debt.”

The forgiveness of Jesus is in the house (literally).  What is our response?  Ignore or adore.  Do we see this woman?  She loves much because she has been forgiven much.  There’s been no “Well, I really don’t feel I’ve ever done anything I need to ask forgiveness for” from the woman who loved much.  She loves much because she has been forgiven much, and we see true faith in action. 

“Your faith has saved you, go in peace,” are Jesus’ final words to the woman.  One of the places we are called to go and be is a community of faith made up of forgiven and forgiving sinners/saints.  Those imaginary neon signs say “Forgiven.”    “Forgiven so that I can forgive” is the line we sang earlier.  Once again, this good news is not simply all about us, nor is it to stop with us.  “Forgive us, Lord,” Jesus taught us to pray, “As we forgive others.”  Our invitation is to live in the forgiveness of God, and I invite you to pray this prayer with me now:

“Lord Jesus, I love and trust and adore you.  You walked among us, died and were raised that all might know mercy and peace.  We thank you that in your kingdom, there is forgiveness.  Cleanse me from doing wrong or failing to do right.  Help me to know my need for you.  Help me to know peace and be someone who forgives as I have been forgiven.  In Jesus’ precious name, we pray all of these things.

“Most people wish to serve God – but in an advisory capacity only.”  Someone has said, commenting on this – “We all know what we want God to do.  We are not so good at bringing our hopes and intentions into line with what God has in mind.”

Discuss among ourselves.  I will say at this point that it is not under our own power/strength of will that our hopes and intentions, and actions are brought into line with what God has in mind.  To follow Christ is to have the Holy Spirit in us, resting on us like a tongue of fire.  Renewing us.  Transforming us.

The same Spirit that was in Christ, on whom the curtain goes up today.  Jesus’ words in the synagogue of his hometown Nazareth, which Luke puts at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.  Jesus was inspired, literally.  The Spirit had descended on him like a dove at his baptism.  The Spirit led him into the wilderness to be tested by the devil, the accuser, the liar.  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…” are the first words from the prophet Isaiah that Jesus reads in his hometown.   The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.  The Spirit of the Lord is upon you.

This passage has held a position of some importance for us here at Blythwood.  Our tagline here is “Continuing Christ’s work in the world.”  It says so on our sign, so it must be true!  I kid but we pray that it may be true.    A few years ago, we asked the question, “What is Christ’s work in the world?”  To answer it, we said, “Well, what did Jesus say his work was?” All of this led us to Luke 4.  Jesus’ manifesto.  Jesus’ inaugural address.  In this story, Luke tells us who Jesus is, what his ministry will be, and what his church will be and do.  Jesus goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom (and if you wonder why you hear me use the phrase “as is our custom” so often – this is where I get it).  It was Jesus’ habit to be among the people of God in a service at which the Word of God was read and spoken about, at which prayers were made, at which a collection for the poor was taken up.  It was Jesus’ habit to be at such a weekly service of worship of God.  I’ll just leave that out there.  Jesus’ good news message here is spoken at a place that is at the centre of community life.  The synagogue generally not only served as a house of worship but as a kind of community centre, a place of hospitality for travellers, a place of teaching.  The good news of Jesus is to speak from and inform the centre of life.

We have this great scene that kind of moves like this.  Jesus stands up to read (because they would stand up to read and sit down to teach – interesting).  The scroll of the prophet Isaiah is handed to him.  He unrolls the scroll and found the place where it is written…

Are you ready?

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Here is the original – “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God.”  Two things we should note here.  The first is the inclusion of a line from Isaiah 58:6 – “to let the oppressed go free.” Isaiah was a prophet, and look at the word he brings from the Lord – what these words of Jesus should draw our attention to from Isaiah 58 – “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to gith and to strike with a wicked fist.  Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.  Is such the fast that I choose a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bullrush and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?  Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?  Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?  It is not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?  Then your light shall break forth like the dawn…”  That last part reminds me of a song that goes, “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79).  The Prince of Peace is reading the words.  The curtain has gone up, and the script had already been written.

The part that Jesus doesn’t read is “The day of vengeance of our God.”  Jesus is declaring the year of God’s favour – the age in which we live.  The age of grace.  We remember the angels’ song at Christmas.  “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours.”  Peace among those on whom his favour rests.  Someone has described the year of the Lord’s favour like this – “is the season of God’s “hospitality” to the human race, which it is Jesus’ mission to proclaim and enact. It is a time when people are simply accepted, not judged. True, it is a summons to conversion—an urgent and insistent summons to a deep and transforming conversion. But before conversion, there is acceptance, welcome, a hand held out to the afflicted, the trapped, and the bound.”

Good news to the poor.  Release to the captives.  Recovery of sight to the blind.  Freedom for the oppressed.  The year of the Lord’s favour.   This is what Jesus is all about.   All of these things working symbolically and practically.  Good news to the poor in spirit – good news to those who know their need of God.  Good news to the economically disadvantaged and all those who are on the margins of society.  Release and freedom to the captive and the oppressed.  Forgiveness of sin is seen as not simply addressing personal guilt but the freedom from a force from which we were unable to extricate ourselves.  Healing and wholeness.  A whole new way of seeing God and neighbour and ourselves and the world.

The action in the scene goes on in reverse.  Jesus rolls up the scroll.  Gives it back to the attendant.  The eyes of all were fixed on him.  Undivided attention.  The first public words that Jesus speaks in Luke’s Gospel (I mean apart from what he just read).  “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”  The first word that Jesus speaks is “today.”  The good news of Christ is not to be relegated to “on a day-long ago” or a vague “someday.”  There is an immediacy about it which gives the day purpose and promise.  To you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah.  Zacchaeus – I must go to your house today (and I like that Jesus invited himself places!).  Today, you will be with me in paradise.

“Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  We have heard it too.  What are we going to do with Jesus’ words?  We’re invited to catch the vision.  We’re celebrating our first anniversary of being able to meet together again in person without a break.  I’ve looked at it in many ways as a year to regroup and be consolidated in the Spirit.  We’ve seen God doing wonderful things during that year.  What is it going to mean for our church as we ask God how God would have us take this good news outside our walls – either reconfiguring old ways or in brand new ways?  The vision remains the same.  A few years ago, we described what these verses mean to our church like this, and I believe all of this still holds true: “God has poured out His Spirit on us, enabling us to do His work.  This includes preaching the good news of Jesus and the reconciliation he has brought about, in action and in word.  It also means helping to feed and clothe those who are unable to do so for themselves.  We are called to proclaim the freedom and forgiveness that is found in Christ and to work through love, mercy, and compassion to free people from systems that tyrannize and oppress.  We are called to proclaim the breaking into our world of the Kingdom of God to those who are blind.  We are called to proclaim and live the year of the Lord’s favour Jesus has brought – the forgiveness of sins, eternal communion with Father, Son, and Spirit, relief from suffering, from sickness, from injustice, from poverty and from oppression.” What will this look like for us?  I’m excited to find out.  May our response be one of acceptance of Jesus’ mission and the call on our lives to take part in more than an advisory capacity.  The response in Nazareth seems favourable at first.  The gathering was amazed at the words of grace coming from Jesus’ mouth.  “Is not this Joseph’s son?” they ask.  In other words, he’s one of us.

Simeon made this promise about Jesus – “This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.” (2:34-35a)  It can be painful to have our inner thoughts revealed.  When it happens, remember that the one revealing them is all about grace and mercy.  “Doubtless you’ll quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’”  Doubtless you will act out of self-interest because this is what we tend to do.  We get it.  Look at sports.  We love hometown heroes, and we love them best when they’re performing their heroics for their hometown.  GTA boys win a cup for the Leafs!  We’ve heard what you did in Capernaum, now we’re in for some good things!  Instead of trying to mollify them, Jesus reminds them.  Hey, you people of God.  This grace thing was never solely about you.  Elijah was sent to a widow up in Sidon, Jezebel’s hometown in actual fact.  The leper that Elisha cleansed was actually a Syrian!

Who are the people in our world who are seen as beyond the grace of God?  Who are the people in our world for whom we would consider it offensive that God’s grace be extended?  We love to categorize people – especially people with whom we disagree.  Jesus reminds this crowd and this crowd that the grace of God goes beyond our categories, and this is the way it has always been for God.

Do we accept God’s grace, or are we scandalized by it?  The Nazareth crowd is scandalized to the point where they try to kill their hometown hero.  It doesn’t work.  He passes through the midst of them.  Even death won’t stop Jesus’ mission, as we’ll see in a few weeks.  It seems to, at least for a couple of days.  But he passes through it.    

We are invited to Jesus’ table today not based on any category to which we belong but based only on our awareness of our need for grace and mercy and our acceptance of the grace and mercy found in Christ Jesus.  Jesus has spelled out his mission and our mission, should we choose to accept it.  May our coming to the table today be an outward sign of our “Yes,” and may this be true for all of us.

Amen 

May we never get used to the good news of Christ or take it for granted or skate past it.  Dorothy Sayers was an English crime writer/poet/playwright.  She wrote this: “To make of his story something that could neither startles, nor shock, nor terrify, nor excite, nor inspire a living soul is to crucify the Son of God afresh.”  This is serious stuff, and we want to be people who take the good news of Jesus seriously, no?  Lent means “springtime” literally.  Renewal.  New life.  Rebirth.  I want that.  Do you want that?  We often think of Lent as a time of giving things up or as a time of penitence or repentance.  As someone has said, “Lent is an opportunity, not a requirement. After all, it is meant to be the church’s springtime, a time when , out of the darkness of sin’s winter, a repentant, empowered people emerges.  No wonder one liturgy refers to it as ‘this joyful season.’”  There are two things going on during these weeks, and really, may they go on every week for us.  The first is an inward look – asking God to enter into those rooms of our hearts that need restoration (very much like spring cleaning – and may we think of this as we do our spring cleaning).  The second is a recognition of those events which we will mark from Good Friday to Easter Sunday – that in his death on the cross and rising on the third day, sin has been overcome (our going-wrong has been overcome).  Forgiveness is at hand.

We will be journeying through the Gospel According to Luke.  We will be asking questions like what is the relationship of Jesus to the church?  What is the relationship of the church to the larger world?  What is the definition of the gospel, the good news of Christ? What are the economic and social implications of this good news?  What is Jesus all about, and what does it mean to follow him?

Let us be blessed by the anticipation as we make our way with Jesus through the Gospel According to Luke.  Of the three Synoptic Gospels writers, Luke is the one who most takes his time as he begins.  Reading Mark has been compared to jumping into a pool off a diving board – Mark gets right to the action.  Matthew draws things out somewhat – he takes 48 verses to get to get to the beginning of Jesus’ adult ministry/career.  Luke leads us into the story as if we were wading into the ocean through shallows.  It is fitting, then, that we look at a story of John the Baptist this morning as we begin.  John’s purpose was one of preparation.  John’s father Zechariah said this about him just after little John was born – “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways…” (1:76)  May this story of John prepare us this morning, let’s ask God for help as we look at it.

“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysianias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wildnerness.” (1-2)  Right from the get go, there are two things in opposition here.  One is the powers that be.  Political power brokers like the Emperor and his regional representative Pontius Pilate (who we will meet again).  Local puppet governors like Herod and his brother Philip – sons of Herod the Great who we remember from the Christmas story.  Religious rulers like Annas and Caiaphas in Jerusalem, who we will meet again.  All of them characterized by traits like cruelty, incompetence, self-interest (imagine!), manipulation, collusion, backroom deals, symbiotic relationships among leaders for mutual-benefit.

The powers that be.  The power brokers.  The power brokers were broken. 

In the middle of this is a people crying out for help.  A people crying out for deliverance.  In whom do we put our trust?  In whom do we hope?  Not John, but the word of God came to John.  The word of God has the power to call things into being.  The Word of God has the power to reverse things – to turn things upside down.  The Word of God has the power to fill valleys, to make mountains and hills low, to make the crooked straight and rough ways smooth.  Mary believed in the great reversal brought about by the one she was to bear that she sang about it as if it had already happened.  Listen to her song – “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” (1:51-52).

What  does is mean to be powerful?  Where does true power lie?  John told the truth.  John didn’t lie.  May God grant leaders who tell the truth, especially in the church.  May God help me to tell the truth.  John told the truth.  He wasn’t looking for popularity or notoriety.  He had been given a word, and he spoke it.  It seems counterintuitive in terms of typical church growth strategies.  Don’t go to where people are; make them come to you.  If they come, don’t provide a building or even seating.  Don’t worry about how you’re dressed, camel hair will be fine.  Call people things like “children of snakes” and warm them that judgement will come.  Speak out against high-ranking officials and expose their double standards.  Encourage those you lead to   follow someone else.  Admit, in fact, that you are entirely unworthy by comparison and that you must in fact, decrease so that they might increase. John told the truth.  May we be emboldened to tell and live the same truth.  John made the invitation.  A baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  Baptism.  John’s baptism symbolic of cleansing, plunging, being immersed fully in this leader for whom John was preparing the way.  An outward mark of an inward reality – repentance.  A changing of one’s mind.  A changing of the way one understands.  “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking,” as Dylan put it, “Make myself a new set of rules/Stop being influenced by fools.”   Repentance or turning is something that we are called to daily, and it is more than a feeling.  Someone has put it like this, ”Repentance is the fruit of a heart yielded to God. Not just regret because of sin’s consequences. Not merely remorse, the emotional sorrow of getting caught in sin. Repentance is an ongoing, conscious decision to turn away from sin and to pursue God’s plans. Therefore, repentance, like fruit, can be seen. The presence of fruit tells us the tree is alive, healthy, and fulfilling its purpose.” 

“Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand” is how Jesus put it.  Forgiveness is at hand.  Wholeness is at hand.  Renewal is at hand.  Restoration is at hand.  Deliverance is at hand.  Turn.  Every day.  This turning should result in fruit.  Following Christ is not about outward shows of piety or your religious pedigree.  John warns those who are coming simply to cover their religious bases, to tick off their religious boxes, as it were.  “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruits worthy of repentance.”  (7-8a)  Then “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (9)  John is not saying here that we are delivered/saved/forgiven by what we do.  We’re saved by faith and the trust in the one who lived, died, rose again, ascended, and will come again.  Repent and bear fruits worthy of repentance.  Even now, the ax is lying at the root of the trees.  John is not judging here.  The ax is not chopping.  The ax is just lying there.  We’re living in the age of grace, the year of the Lord’s favour, as we’ll hear next week.  John is not laying down any judgement here, but he’s laying down a warning.  Bear fruits worthy of repentance because the bearing of such fruit is the other side of the repentance/faith coin.  To not bear such fruit is to be as useless as an apple tree in an apple orchard from which no apples come.  What would you do with such a tree but chop it down and use it for bbq? 😊

These words are being proclaimed in our hearing, so let us hear them.  “What should we do?” ask the crowds, and that’s a really, really good question.  Let us continue to ask it.  “What then should we do?”  The question is put another way in this cartoon from Pontius’ Puddle.

What, then, should we do?  Paul keeps it simple.  He doesn’t add any caveats or exceptions or “only in the case of” or “only if I remember,” or “only if I stay comfortable,” or ________.  Justice is to be done by us in visible tangible ways.  All of these ways for the interests of others, not ourselves.  The rich were getting richer, and the poor were getting poorer.  Something needs to be done.  If you have too many clothes, give them away.  If you have more food than you need, give it away.  May God give us a strong theology of enough and a wisdom about what constitutes enough in our lives.  Tax collectors- collect no more than the amount that is prescribed for you.  Don’t cheat in order to gain more for yourself.  Be a good citizen.  Soldiers do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusations.  Do not use positions of authority to get what you want from people who are under your authority.  Do not use positions of power and influence for self-aggrandizement and self-profit. 

The people were wondering whether John might be the one to save them (v15), but we’re still in the preparation stage.  The curtain is going to go up on the Saviour next week when we look at Luke 4.  For now though, listen to John’s introduction (v16).  One is coming who will baptize you with Holy Spirit and fire.  We’re not called to repentance and the fruits of repentance on our own.  When Luke describes the coming of the Holy Spirit on the church, he’ll describe it in terms of fire. Fire not as something to be feared but as something that burns away those things that would keep us from God; fire that refines us just as fire refines silver and gold and turns it into something new and precious.  May these weeks of Lent be a time of refining, of rebirth, and of renewal.  As we’ve heard John’s words, may this be true for us all.

I read an article this past week entitled “I Asked A. I To Write My Christmas Sermon: No Really, I Did.”  It was inevitable, I suppose, but I don’t see it as cause for concern, professionally speaking.  Using ChatGPT, the author asked the chatbot to write a sermon based on Luke 2 with quotes from Martin Luther, Karl Barth and Barack Obama.  The result was a surprisingly accurate and orthodox message of why Jesus’ birth is indeed good news, better than many messages the author had heard about “following the star in our hearts” or “a diatribe about the historicity of the incarnation.”  The thing that was lacking was human warmth. This may seem too obvious to state, but it says something about the good news which we celebrate today.  The good news needs a person to tell it, as the author states: “the gospel needs a preacher in the same way that salvation is predicated upon the scandal of the incarnation. The vulnerable and defenceless baby in the manger, the human preacher, fumbling over his or her words in the pulpit. The preaching of Artificial Intelligence can’t convincingly sympathize with the human plight. Nor can it replicate the audacious foolishness of one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”  Neither can people sharing the wonder of “God with us” be replicated artificially.  So let us wonder together, dear family, with John as he begins his Gospel, his Good News. 

A story is told of William Willimon when he was Dean of the Chapel at Duke University in North Carolina.  A couple came to talk about getting married.  They were in love and felt that differences could be overcome, despite their parents’ misgivings.  He was a devout, observant Jew.  She was a Christian. At one point, she said to Willimon, “But surely there isn’t any real difference in what we believe, is there?  Except for that Jesus thing.”

“That Jesus Thing” is what we are here to celebrate today.  Someone has said that to read the prologue to John’s gospel feels like standing on holy ground.  Jesus.  We hold these two truths together as we stand together.  Jesus is wholly holy, wholly other beyond our imagining.  At the same time, he is as close as our breath. Words ultimately fail in the face of the one called The Word.  We have tried to define him.  The Jesus Project.  The Jesus Myth.  The Pagan Christ. Words, words and more words.  John himself will end his Good News with this – “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

The early church used the most words in its early creeds to speak of Jesus.  The Apostles’ Creed says: And (we believe) in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord: who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; the third day he rose from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from where he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

The Nicene Creed has this: We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him, all things were made. For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man. For our sake, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day, he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

To which all God’s people say, “Amen!”

In his Gospel, faith for John is about more than belief, though it is about belief.  Faith is not as much something one has as something one does. – believing things about Jesus; acknowledging the truth of Jesus’ words, living in a disposition of trust in Jesus; action based on that trust; personal commitment to him in adoration, love, obedience and service

And so we come this morning to adore him.  In the beginning, was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.  Here is the good news.  Before humanity, before creation, before everything, there is God.  Here is the good news, humanity is neither first nor is it alone.  God has come to us.

He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 

God has come to us.  What we thought was a prologue about Jesus becomes about ourselves.  The 500 million-mile view zooms into one man named John.  His role is to recognize the light when it appears, to call attention to it so that others may recognize and believe -  trust in and commit to the light and worship and praise and adore (and you can see how we are now involved in the prologue).  A struggle is laid out between acceptance and non-acceptance of the light.  We recognize this struggle in the world, and we recognize this struggle in ourselves.  News that is too good to be true and at the same time too good not to be true.  We walk/run/stumble on together, remembering the words “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord; remembering words about a peaceable kingdom where the wolf lies down with the lamb; remembering words about strengthening weak hands and feeble knees with the message “Be strong, do not fear, here is your God…’; remembering words about the promise of a sign and the sign would mean “God is with us.”  Let us remember, and let us gaze in wonder.

Someone has said that getting to know Jesus is like seeing a dawn break over all of creation.  It’s like being invaded by grace and truth and life.  Let us put ourselves into the prologue and consider how we have known grace and truth, and life in Christ.  “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” The Jesus thing.  We have seen his glory.  We have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and this is often enough.  At other times we may struggle, and we may doubt.  “Is it worth it?” we may ask.  “Is the Jesus thing really that big a deal?”  In the middle of all of this, John reminds us that in Jesus, we know life in its fullest sense; in Jesus, we know a depth of meaning in each and every part of our being; in Jesus, our deepest longings are met – all that we long to be, all we hope and all we fear – are met.  May we be a people who continue to wonder and adore.  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift.  Merry Christmas, dear family. 

I have to say I’m really really glad to be able to come to worship together on Christmas Eve; to stop in all the frenzied activity that for so many defines the season.  I read someone say recently that they’re not sure how much rejoicing goes on at Christmas.  Lots of frolicking for sure but how much rejoicing?  How much sitting with deep joy? 

So I’m glad we have the chance to sit, particularly with Luke’s telling of the Christmas story.  Many of the traditions which we love and with which we’re so familiar are not here.  I realize I’m on potentially dangerous ground here and by no means am I one to decry tradition.  On this year’s Christmas episode of “Abbot Elementary” (a show set in a primary school in Philadelphia) Jacob Hill, a young teacher (who is a well meaning but annoying advocate for social justice) inserts himself into a Christmas Lunch celebration/tradition put on by two of his fellow veteran teachers, Barbara and Melissa.  He proceeds throughout the dinner to tell them everything that is wrong about Christmas, from the consumerism to the co-opting of pagan rituals.  Barbara and Melissa end up suddenly feeling the need to get some air, despite the fact that it’s below zero outside (because it gets cold in Philadelphia too).

I don’t want to be a Christmas Crank tonight of all nights.  I do want us to notice how things are stripped away in our story.  There are no animals mentioned.  No ox and donkey looking lovingly down at the manger.  There’s no little drummer boy accompanying the shepherds (or sheep for that matter).  There’s no heavenly glow at the birth scene (though there’s certainly a glow in nearby fields).  There’s no description of a bleak midwinter night.  There is a manger.  There is Jesus and his family.  There are shepherds and angels.  There is praise.  There is pondering.

I’m glad for the chance to ponder.  That much loved carol talks about a town that lies still; that sleeps a deep and dreamless sleep.  Our reality is much different isn’t it?  I wonder if anyone went out shopping today (or maybe last Saturday).  People searching for the perfect gift.  People arguing over parking spots.  People planning gatherings.  People who are wondering where their hopes and fears are going to be met.  What is it that we hope for?  What is it that we fear?  We’re all aware of forces at work in our world which are beyond our control.  There is something or someone to whom we answer – jobs, the market, families, influence (influencers), sports, entertainment, mindless distraction…  Imperial forces were at work in the lives of Mary and Joseph.  The force to whom everyone was answerable was that of Rome.  The Emperor Augustus mentioned in the first line of the story.  The saviour of the world, as he was known.  The one who brought peace to the empire.  But at what cost? Which brings the question – where do we look for peace, and at what cost?  In our story, we have a figure who lays in direct opposition to false claims of peace bringing – to false claims of power to which all else must bow.  The figure has been laid in a manger.  Mary and Joseph had heard the announcement.  They accepted the announcement.  They had set out on a journey together, trusting.  They struggled together to find a space in a busy and distracted world.

They found the space.  May we be like them.  I’m thankful for the opportunity to find space such as this.  Space to ponder.  Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.  Someone has said “… God’s activity in the world, in its mystery and surprise, sometimes requires discernment that is achieved only with difficulty, even among those specially favored by God.”  A lot of our frenetic activity over the past weeks has been about us.  This story reminds us that the story in which we are invited to live is not primarily about us.  This story is centred on what God is doing, and can’t be reduced to our own expectations (great or small as they may be), or our own traditions even.  This story reminds us of the one whom we are invited to make our centre, and it is most definitely by design that the Christ candle sits in the middle of the Advent wreath.  The still point of the turning world; let us cease from all our strivings and adore.  Jesus – “The Lord is salvation.”  Emmanuel – “God is with us.”  God lives and God gives in order that we might be brought back to Him, made whole, forgiven, made new.

Made watchful.  The shepherds are sometimes thought of as lazy or drowsy, which gave rise, no doubt to carols like “Shepherds, Shake Off Your Drowsy Sleep.” They weren’t lazy, they were hard at work.  In the night.  In the darkness.  They were watching.  In that watching they were ready to greet the heavens bursting open and God bursting through.  I wonder if Jesus was hearing echoes of the story of his birth that his mother might have told him when he would tell his followers years later, “Be alert at all times, praying…”  Be watchful.  Be alert. 

We talked about signs last Sunday.  Seeing signs of the holy, of God in the seeming mundane (and I say “seeming” as in a world in which the Word was made flesh, is anything really simply mundane?).  May we be watchful for signs of God’s activity around us.  There is nothing extraordinary about a child wrapped in bands of cloth – it was common practice to make sure the little baby’s limbs would straighten.  There was something unusual about a child being found in a manger – a place where animals were nourished.  I don’t want us to miss this tonight.  The shepherds come to praise “God is with us” in a place where animals come to eat.  The one who is called the Word of Life will later on call himself the Bread of Life, and we will gather around to praise him and adore him and to eat.

So may our gathering around His table be a sign of our praise and adoration as we ponder the wonder of “God is with us.”  The place where hopes and fears, sorrow and joy, are met as God reconciles us to Himself.  The manger is not the end of the story.  More of the story is told by poet Richard Wilbur.  As we close, let us listen to his “Christmas Hymn”:

A stable-lamp is lighted Whose glow shall wake the sky; The stars shall bend their voices, And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry, And straw like gold shall shine; A barn shall harbor heaven, A stall become a shrine.

This child through David’s city Shall ride in triumph by; The palm shall strew its branches, And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry, Though heavy, dull, and dumb, And lie within the roadway To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken, And yielded up to die; The sky shall groan and darken, And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry For stony hearts of men: God’s blood upon the spearhead, God’s love refused again.

But now, as at the ending, The low is lifted high; The stars shall bend their voices, And every stone shall cry. And every stone shall cry In praises of the child By whose descent among us The worlds are reconciled.

Amen

One of the pastors that I didn’t ask the question “How did you know?” of was my father, who, from a young age, had devoted his life to vocational ministry.  He never pushed me, and I suppose I didn’t want to make him feel he was unduly influencing me by asking the question or even discussing it.  He had a library of around 2,000 books and would occasionally give me one to read or ask how my reading was going.  I would say, “Oh, fine,” but really felt that those books were more his thing than mine.

My father died rather suddenly on December 12^th, 2004.  He went into the Emergency Department of the hospital in Walkerton on Friday and died in Owen Sound General on Sunday.  In life, we find that things do not go the way we thought they would or as we expected, and this was the first time in my life I experienced such an outcome.  It was difficult. Over the coming months, I took around half of the books from his library and put them in our basement.  I began to read them.  I became involved in leadership here at Blythwood and was becoming more and more aware of what reliance on God means (I’m still learning).  I began to feel that tugging on my heart toward vocational ministry more strongly, though the question remained, “How will I know?” 

Summer of 2007.  I awoke too early, as I often do (5 am).  I went downstairs to find something to read.  Looking over the bookshelves, I found this unassuming paperback copy of a book published in 1984 by William Willimon.  It’s called Preaching and Leading Worship: The Pastor’s Handbook.  Nothing unusual.  I opened it up, and I must say at this point that my father was in the habit of inscribing his books, at least with his name and address; sometimes writing about who gave him the book, that kind of thing.  He would underline things and often make notes in them too.  I opened up the book, and this is what was written inside – “George M. Thomas June 1989.  You just never know, David, this book may prove useful to you.  Dad”

Coincidence?  Providence?  God’s hand at work?  It depends on your point of view, I suppose.  Outwardly there’s nothing miraculous about an inscription in a book. My own faith told me that it couldn’t be ignored.  I enrolled in my first course at McMaster Divinity College that summer, and here I am today.

What is a sign but an indication of God at work or an indication of God’s promise?  “Ask the Lord for a sign.”  This is what the prophet Isaiah tells King Ahaz.  Signs can be a difficult thing.  To perceive a sign from God can demand things of us.  We might think we would be better off to not bother asking for one or looking for one in the first place.  We like to be in control, after all.  We like to think that we’re able to solve things.  I didn’t ask God for a sign per se, but I knew that I could not ignore it.  Even though it would be a letting go of control over my life.  A letting go of the reins.  A falling backward in trust.  It’s fitting that the “falling backward” move is such a big part of trust exercises – you have no control when you fall backward.  Of course, at the same time, God is whispering, “I’ve got you.”

A sign needn’t necessarily be miraculous.  A sign at the root is an invitation to us to trust in the love of God.  An invitation to trust in the deliverance of God.  It’s an answer to that question we’re always asking, consciously or not, “Who will save us?”  This is a question that’s particularly meaningful when things have not gone or are not going the way we thought they would.  When things are spinning out of control – and if not out of then most certainly beyond our control.  We cling on to the myth of our self-sufficiency.  I’m watching my tv, and a man comes on and tells me, “We’ve got dreams.  Gotta make them happen.”  According to this man, patronizing a certain online investment service will enable him to realize his dreams and to sleep like a baby.

To which I reply, “You mean waking every two or three hours and screaming?”

Or maybe that was just my experience as a baby.

What do we do, though seriously, when we are literally or figuratively waking up every 2-3 hours and screaming?  When forces are out of work which is outside of any control, we might, in our pride, think we have.  If there is one thing we’ve learned over the last three years, it’s that none of us are immune to forces which are beyond us. King Ahaz of Judah was facing forces beyond his control.  Literally - military forces from Israel (Israel or Ephraim had split with Judah at this point) and Syria which threatened Judah.  “Ask the Lord for a sign,” Isaiah tells him.  “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test,” replies Ahaz.  The king is clothing his refusal in most pious language.   The clothing is just to cover the fact that his refusal to ask God for a sign has more to do with his refusal to trust God at all.  Ahaz’ plan is all about realpolitik.  He will make an alliance with the Assyrian Empire rather than trust in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  This will end badly for Judah.  For now, though, Isaiah tells the king, “Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also?  Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.  Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.”  The sign is God with us.  The sign is a child.  Deliverance from the forces that threaten is at hand.  “He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.” Curds and honey means blessing.  It means goodness by the time this child is old enough to know right from wrong. “Before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be destroyed.”  Goodness. Blessings. Deliverance.  The promise of God with us. 

No one knows for sure how this promise was fulfilled in the days of Isaiah and Ahaz.  The child of Isaiah?  The child of Ahaz?  Nothing miraculous about this child born of a young woman.  An everyday occurrence without eyes of faith to see and ears of faith to hear God’s promise – Immanuel.  God with us.  Deliverance. Blessings.  The goodness of God.  Ahaz engaged in the art of the possible.  God engages the art of the imaginable.  God’s imagination is boundless!

Which brings us to our nativity scene.  A story is told of a little girl who came home one day from school, excited to tell her parents about her part in the school’s Christmas Play.  The only problem was she couldn’t remember what part she had been given.  She only remembered that it started with “B.”  Her family spent some time trying to figure out who “B” might be but couldn’t come up with anything.  On the night of the play, it was revealed that their daughter played one of the bystanders.

When we look at the Christmas story as it is told by Luke, it is very easy to see Joseph in a kind of bystander light.  He’s mentioned only in association with going to Bethlehem because he is descended from the family of David; at being amazed by Simeon’s words in the Temple; at being mentioned by Mary as she’s telling Jesus how worried she and his father have been when he went AWOL during their visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was 12.      

Joseph is not so much a bystander in Matthew’s story, but we see outside forces acting on him.  Things have not gone the way he expected them to.  In the middle of these situations, we have choices to make.  Joseph wanted to do the right thing.  He did not wish to expose Mary to public disgrace.  He wanted to call off the whole thing quietly.  He receives a sign – an indication of God at work.  An indication of God’s promise being fulfilled.   Do you believe God speaks to us in dreams?  I do, absolutely.

“But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife (do not be afraid to trust God), for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people form their sins.’  All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us.’”

Trust in God is not always easy, and it could be costly (at least in terms of things we may value).  We don’t know what Joseph and Mary faced in terms of reaction to this scandal in Nazareth or Bethlehem.  Someone has said, “Our choices are not always easy to make or to keep. The consequences are sometimes painful, but there are always choices. We need not be bystanders to our own lives. We can, like Joseph, make the hard choice to believe that God is at work, that God is present, even in the most troubling of situations. We can choose to be obedient to the call to commit ourselves to follow, to commit ourselves to honour… even when it becomes difficult to do so.”

But what else would we do?  Here's the wonder of the sign of Emmanuel, of God with us.  God refuses to abandon us.  What else could we do but to trust to commit ourselves to follow? What else could we do but put ourselves into this Nativity story which has been ongoing for over 2,000 years?

There are two things I pray we do as we close.   The first is this - Let us name and claim Jesus this Advent season.  There are two names given to the child born in our Matthew 1 passage.  The first is Jesus.  Yeshua.  “God saves.”  Deliverer.    The second is Emmanuel – “God is with us.”  Look at the last thing that Joseph does as a sign to us – “… and he named him Jesus.”  To name this child meant that Joseph was claiming him as his own.  I am his.  He is mine.  May we ask God to give us eyes to see the signs of God’s promises all around us.  May we ask God to give us eyes to see the signs of God’s wondrous love all around.  Signs that God refuses to abandon us.  Such signs are all around us.  A group of our elders sitting around a candlelit table in the Friendship Room filling out gift boxes for those who have a hard time getting out of the home.  The smell of hot chocolate filling a house on St. Joseph street where, on a Saturday afternoon, people who may feel forgotten are reminded of love and grace.  A group of children singing of the wonder of Jesus’ birth.  Emmanuel’s birth. The birth of  “God saves.”  The birth of “God is with us.”

Secondly, pray that God would make us signs of God’s wondrous love.  The angel’s message to the shepherds was, “This will be a sign for you…”  May our prayer be, “Let us be a sign to all.”  May God call things into being in and through us – things like the hope that is to be found in Jesus, the vision of peace described by Isaiah, the joy that is known in Christ no matter our circumstances, the wondrous love of “God with us.” – the wondrous truth that God refuses to abandon us.

May God help us see such signs and be such signs.  May this be true for each and every one of us.  Merry Christmas, dear family.

Amen

One of the annual Christmas traditions at Blythwood is for Peter Hurlburt to hand me the Jesus figurine the Sunday before our Christmas Eve candlelight service.  We don’t put Jesus in the scene until Christmas Eve.  In those days before the Christmas Eve service, the Jesus figurine lies in the middle drawer of my desk.  I think what I might do, though, is to take up the practice of the pastor in the story of the missing baby Jesus and leave Jesus there throughout the year as a reminder to myself that Jesus is there in the midst of . . .  the wilderness of my middle desk drawer.  I hope I’m not the only one.  The middle drawer tends to contain what I would best call detritus of life.  Half dead batteries.  A Tide Pen.  Pieces of Blythwood history that people have given me with which I just cannot bear to part.  A microphone head.  The nozzle for the pump that I use to inflate basketballs/volleyballs.  Why don’t I keep those together?  You get the idea.

I think I might just leave that Jesus figurine in my desk the whole year through; maybe attach a post-it to it that says, “Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God.”  In the middle of my detritus.  In the middle of my wilderness.  The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad.

Two truths about followers of Christ are evident in our readings today.  One is that we have been given a song.  The song might be called “God Is For You” or “God Is With You” to personalize it.  We might use the words from Isaiah for our song title – “Here Is Your God.”  That’s our song.  If you’re saying, “Well I’m really not that much of a singer,” don’t worry about it.  Shout it.  The word translated “singing” in Isaiah 35 can be (and has been in some versions of the Bible) translated as “shout.”  Our song, like our joy, is not something we need to call up from within ourselves.  It is given to us.  All we need (to) do is accept and not reject this gift that comes to us like the gift of a child, speaking of joy.  This gift of a child named “God with us.”  We don’t need to call it up from within ourselves and this is a good thing.  Exile is hard.  The wilderness is hard.  “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land,” said the people of God as they hung up their harps on tree branches by the rivers of a city, a city whose people had carried them away in captivity.  How can we sing?

How can we sing (or shout) this Sunday?  In Latin-influenced church traditions, this is called Gaudete Sunday.  The Sunday of joy.  The Sunday of rejoicing.  The candle is pink today because it was thought that the usual penitent purple (and the sorrow and regret we feel for doing wrong) just didn’t fit on Joy Sunday.  How can we speak of joy given the state of the world/state of our lives/state of the lives of those who are most dear to us?  Might it seem out of place, even with a pink candle?  Might it seem gaudy even – extravagantly bright or showy, given the state of things?  Gaudete Sunday – and it’s interesting that gaudy comes from that same Latin word, gaudere, from which we get Gaudete. It means rejoice.

So let us sing with the Psalmist – “I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.”  Can’t stop, won’t stop.  “Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God”  We see how all these Advent candles are working together and making their truth known together.

So this is the first thing.  We’ve been given a song.  We’ve personalized this “God for/God with you” or “Here is your God,” but we don’t stop there.  Here is the second thing that I’d like us to hold up as truth for ourselves this Joy Sunday. 

We’re travelling along a highway together.  You know, one of my favourite images for the church is that of a pilgrim people, a people on a journey together toward the holy city on the holy mountain.  We are called to go together, and we are called to invite others to join us as we go.  Someone has put it like this:  “We are travelling the Lord’s Highway today. We may not yet be all that we can be; we may not yet have reached our destination as the people of God, but we are on the way. We are a pilgrim people, singing our songs of ascent as we go up into the glorious presence of God, even as we are already embraced by our God every step of the way.”

Now here is the thing about the wilderness of which Isaiah writes – it’s not the kind of wilderness that we might think of here in Canada, where we tend to think of wilderness in terms of forests and rivers and lakes of which we might have first-hand knowledge or have seen in wilderness documentaries (Lorne Green’s “New Wilderness” was big for me).  It’s not the kind of lush plain that we might think of from safaris and wilderness documentaries.  The wilderness around the Dead Sea in southern Israel is rough.  There’s not enough water for crops or trees.  Winter rains bring growth every year, but it’s pretty scraggly growth.  Here are a couple of pictures I took when Nicole and I were in Israel some years ago.  The vegetation is enough to sustain sheep or goats, who manage to get by on this kind of sparseness, but that’s it.  This is the promise made in Isaiah 35, where the wilderness and the desert are rejoicing along with us.  “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus, it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon (and its cedar trees) shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon (the coastal plain where crops grow in abundance.  They shall see the glory of the Lord (the weight of God’s presence), the majesty of our God.”

As we go along, we strengthen weak hands and make firm feeble knees.  Not our own, of course; we’re not up to that on our own (and I’m starting to learn something about feeble knees, let me say).  One another’s hands and knees.  Why do we come together week by week if not at least in part, to encourage one another?  To remind one another.  To say to one another whose hearts are fearful, “Be strong, do not fear!”  Why?  Here is your God.  He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense.  He will come and save you.  If this talk of vengeance sounds harsh to us, remember that it is God’s work and it involves setting right all injustice, relief of suffering and the liberation of all from fear and impoverishment. This is what God does.  When we worship together - when we are reminded of God’s truth together and remind one another of God’s truth together and encourage one another in God’s truth together – we are made more like Him, and we are enabled to go out and do as God would have us do, reflecting God’s ways.

May we be attentive to what God is doing.  How will we know that God is with us?  “How will I know?” as the musical question goes.  The life of faith is one that is, at times, paired with doubt.  Doubt is not so much the thing to be avoided as fear is.  It’s been said that the opposite of faith is not doubt but fear.  This is why we repeatedly hear “Fear not” or “Be strong, do not fear.”    Paul Tillich said, 'Faith is the courage that conquers doubt not by removing it, but taking it as an element into itself.”  You may be saying to me, “David, it’s great to hear that God is with us and not to fear, but how are we going to be assured that God is with us?”

To which I say look to the promise.  The promise is in all of our readings today.  The promise will be made known fully one day, but we know it in part now.  “The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.  The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.” (Ps. 146: 7b-8a)  “The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow.” (Ps. 146-9a)  The promise is heard in Isaiah 35 – “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”

Follower of Christ, fear not.  This faith is not just something we speculate about or look to in order to hold a theory about life and death and everything in between.  This faith looks like something.  From what have you been freed?  How are you being enabled to see in a whole new way?  How have you been lifted up when bowed down under a crushing weight?  How are you coming to hear in a whole new way?  How have you been enabled to leap and given a new song to sing?

Even when doubts arise.  Even when things have not gone the way we wanted to or expected them to.  Even John the Baptist.  We may think that if only we had been there, sitting at Jesus’ feet, doubts would dissolve.  Not so much.  In Matthew 11, we have John the Baptist wondering.  He’s in prison.  He heard about what Jesus was doing.  “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

As an answer, Jesus tells John through John’s people to look at what’s going on.  May we never let questions or concerns about what’s going to happen or how it will happen blind us to what God is doing among us.  “Go and tell John what you hear and see,” says Jesus.  “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  And then a beatitude – “And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.”

Promises that will know completion one day promises that we know in part now, no matter what is going on.  God is with us no matter what our circumstances.  Joy even in the middle of sorrow.  Christmas is not unmitigated joy for all.  Blue Christmas is real.  Joy is God with us in the middle of loss, where we see good news being proclaimed and held onto.  We saw that last week in our church during the service for our sister Ruth.  Christmas decorations and a memorial service together, and why not?  How much more meaningful do the promises of God with us become at such times?  Promises that we see in the life of our church family in the stranger being watched over; in people being given eyes to see and ears to hear.

I think I’ll leave baby Jesus in my desk this year as a reminder of the joy to be found in “God with us.”  Someone has described “God with us” like this -   “See, he’s here! He’s been here all along. Right alongside, through the joys and the heartaches, through the struggles and the accomplishments.” Right there, maybe out of sight for a time, but close by. Within reach. Even in the desert. Even in a place of exile. Of uncertainty. Right there, all the time. Emmanuel.

God with us.  Our hope.  Our peace.  Our joy.  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift.

Amen    

We’re not going to come close to exhausting the topic of peace this morning.  That’s ok, though; we don’t have to.  It’s not so much about exhausting a subject as it is living in a particular orientation toward something, or better yet, someone.  What is it that we need to hear about peace today?  The biblical concept of peace goes beyond the absence of conflict.  It goes so far as well-being for all, security, goodness.  Each Advent, we devote a Sunday to peace.  Every year for the past several years, I have come back to those lines from “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”:

 And in despair, I bowed my head 'There is no peace on Earth, ' I said, For hate is strong and mocks the song Of peace on Earth, goodwill to men

I don’t need to describe to you the ways in which peace is not known in our world.  Actual wars that are being fought.  Ones that get the headlines, like the war in Ukraine.  Ones we rarely hear about, like Myanmar, Yemen, Sudan, Afghanistan, Mali, Somalia, and Ethiopia.  Increasing polarization politically, socially, economically.  An increasing division between people.  We all get the idea that something has gone very wrong.  At the same time, we long for something different, don’t we?  In the midst of all of this, at this time of year, we’re reminded of the seemingly impossible being made possible.  Charlie Brown’s scraggly tree is transformed into something else.  The Grinch’s heart grows three times its size in one day.

Is this kind of transformation beyond us?  I would say yes, it is beyond us.  There is someone through whom we are not beyond transformation.  Paul writes near the end of his letter to the Romans about scripture – “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.” (Rom 15:4)  Who are we to talk about peace this Christmas, and what should we do with talk of peace this Christmas?  We’ve already made a good start by hearing God’s word. 

Isaiah knew what it was like to live in a world of threats to national security.  Isaiah knew what it was like to live in a world of invasion and desolation.  Isaiah knew what it was like to live in a society where the poor were devoured by the rich, in much the same way lambs would be devoured by wolves.  Isaiah saw the word of God.  God who calls into existence that which did not exist.  God who brings forth life even from death.  God who brings newness even from devastation.  “A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”   Life where there is seemingly no life.  Jesse is David’s father.  The seeming end of the Kingdom of David will not be the end.  The destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the people into captivity will not be the end of God’s promise that the throne of David would be established forever.  This is the new life to which we look back at Christmas.  “The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge (personal intimate union) and the fear (awe, reverence) of the Lord.” (Is 11:2-3)  Righteousness (justice) and faithfulness will be so much part of him that they will be like the clothes he wears.  “Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.” (Is 11:5)

We look back at Christmas, of course.  We look back to how this promise was fulfilled in new life when a baby’s cry was heard coming out of a manger in Bethlehem.   Jesus the Christ.  Son of David, Son of God.  Prince of Peace.  We look forward too.  The Divine Vision, or the Divine Dream as I like to call it, we’ve looked at it before together.  The wolf lying down with the lamb.  The leopard lying down with the kid.  The calf and the lion and the fatling (the calf that is literally ready to be eaten) together, led by a little child.  Bears grazing.  The lion eating straw like an ox.  The vision is one of not just situational togetherness but generational transformation.  This transformation is permanent and for all, as we read about the young bear and cow lying down together as the knowledge of God (intimate union with God) goes out from the holy mountain (which we heard about last week) and covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.

Is this Divine Dream just a pipe dream?  Is it something we could ever hope to bring about on our own?  Just give it a chance.

One of the writers I was looking at in preparation for today talked about the animal situation in his household.  The discord among his two cats, one of whom just wanted to be left alone and his three-legged rescue terrier who at times likes to terrorize and just generally cause mayhem.  As he says, “Maybe it is all a show. Maybe they really are friendly beasts and could live together in peace and harmony, holding paws and singing the animal version of kumbaya.”  This is the problem with Kum Ba Ya.  We’ve become rather cynical about Kum Ba Ya.  It’s a song that’s thought to have originated among the Gullah Geechee of the Georgia Islands.  Descendants of Africans who were enslaved on those islands.  It’s a song that is a prayer.  Come by here, my Lord, come by here.  It was popularized by many singers in the folk era (Pete Seeger, Odetta).  It was prominent among those working for civil rights reform in the US in the 1950s and 60s.  Things took a turn, though, for the song.  People began to speak of “Kumbaya moments,” which largely meant false expressions of unity in the midst of a lot of disunity.  Meaningless expressions of togetherness.  We’ll come back to it, though, because I want us to have our own Kumbaya moment in the truest sense of the word.  An turning toward God and expression of a longing for God’s peaceful unifying presence.

We’ve become cynical about “Kumbaya moments.”  If I thought that peace was up to us I would be cynical about it too.  What is it that we need to hear about peace this morning?  This peace for which we long will not be manufactured by us, not even us in the church.  Left to our own devices, we can’t even live at peace among ourselves, can we?  A leader won’t lead us to peace.  Not even Solomon could do that, and peace was his very name.  Psalm 72 is listed in our NRSV Bibles as a song the King Solomon.  David’s son.    Listen to the song/prayer of Psalm 72 again – “Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son.  May he judge your people with righteousness and your poor with justice. May the mountains yield prosperity (shalom) for the people and the hills in righteousness…” (Psalm 72:1-3)  Even Solomon, who started out so promisingly, would end up being an oppressor to his people.  The Davidic dynasty would come to an end when King Zedekiah is carried off to Babylon in chains.  This is not the end of the promise made to David that his throne would be established forever.  Look at the notes of hope sounded at the end of the Psalm – “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things.”  Wondrous things like announcing to a young woman that through her, the promise made to David would be fulfilled.  The promise was fulfilled in the one called The Prince of Peace.  Paul writes that these things written in former days were written for our instruction so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.  Listen to the description of the Psalm – “May he live while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations. May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.”  May the Spirit of Christ fall on us like rain that falls on mown grass, like showers that water the earth.

We don’t need to manufacture peace ourselves.  We’re called to be a people who look to the Prince of Peace – people who allow ourselves to be embraced by him and embrace him in turn.  I’ve shown the painting by American artist Edward Hicks before.  It’s called “The Peaceable Kingdom.” It depicts the latter part of our reading from Isaiah 11 this morning.  What I didn’t know what that Hicks painted over 60 versions of “The Peaceable Kingdom” throughout his life.  In the earliest ones, we see the animals looking quite peaceful; primitive is what they call the style.  When I spoke to Dan about this once, I said, “It reminds me of a cartoon,” which shows the extent of my own art appreciation.  I’m learning, though.  In the earlier depictions, we see the animals quite peaceful and looking out at us and the child who will lead them there among them.  As he went through his life, Hicks saw hope for peace fading as barriers were built, animosity rose (and we know what the Preacher of Ecclesiastes meant when he said there is truly nothing new under the sun).  In the later painting we see the animals looking more vicious.  Teeth and claws bared.  This did not lead to despair for Hicks – not at all.  Look at the child in the later paintings.  He’s no longer passive but actively holding on.  Someone has put it like this – “Hicks, though he began losing hope in the workings of the human community, began to cling even more tightly to Christ. In Christ, Hicks would put his hope.” 

Which brings us to our final reading.  It’s not simplistic to say “Jesus is the answer” because we never come to an end of understanding in our hearts just what that statement means.  To know Christ was Paul’s personal goal.  To know the Prince of Peace.  “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death…Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” (Phil 3:10,12)  Jesus is home for Paul.  Home base.  The key of C.  They still point in the centre of a turning world.  The Son of David/Son of God in his introduction to Romans.  In this latter part of Romans (which we’ll take a good look at, God willing, in 2023), Paul writes of what life in Christ looks like for us – how the people of God are called and enabled to stand as a signal of God’s peaceable kingdom.

What might it look like for us to stand as signals of peace this Advent and beyond?  I want to look at two practical ways this can look based on Paul’s words.  Firstly let us signal our desire and our intent to be such a people.  “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus (because we can’t do it alone), so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 15:5-6)  We’re talking about an eminently practical act here which should not be beyond us.  Participation together in an active life of praise and worship – “so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (15:6)  In the original Greek Paul writes of “one mind” and “one mouth”  NT Wright describes the result this way – “‘With one mind’ and ‘with one mouth’ go closely together, describing that glad unanimity of praise and worship which indicates both to the watching world and to the Christians themselves that they are not worshipping a merely local deity, the projection of their own culture, but the One True God of all the world, the God now known as the father of Jesus the Messiah.”

Here is practical matter #2.  “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” (15:7)  This Advent, let us ask the question, where are we being called to create welcome space for others or step into welcome space into which we are being invited.  There are two required parts for a welcome, after all – an invitation and the acceptance of an invitation.  Where are we being called to make a hospitable space and invite others in or accept an invitation into a hospitable space?  It might be in a home.  It might be in a seating area at a crowded mall.  It might be at Seeds of Hope in a room or on the sidewalk.  It might be at a Friday night at a Christmas Carol Concert or even a church service with lunch afterwards (or no lunch at church that day, and you go out for lunch afterwards). 

It's the 2^nd Sunday of Advent and the 1^st Sunday of December, and we have what I pray is a welcome opportunity to accept an invitation to a table; to declare our desire to live in the peace of Christ.  May it be one we all accept here this morning. Amen

“I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’”  I rejoiced when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”  This is how the song begins.  Psalm 122.  This was not the Psalmist’s idea, note.  It came from outside of himself.  What would it look like for us to be glad together? What would it look like for us to rejoice together?  I’m not talking about the manufactured joy that is so much a part of the Christmas season.  I’m not talking about the joy that is so often expected of us - to the point where we might feel that there’s something wrong with us if we’re not feeling it.  I’m certainly not talking about the joy that is promised through the perfect gift or the perfect Christmas dinner or the perfect…. Whatever perfect is supposed to be and however much it’s supposed to cost – providing of course that we have the means.

We might say that gladness or joy is beyond us.  We have too much to take care of.  We have too much to worry about.  We know too much.  We’ve seen too much.  We’ve heard too much. To which I say let us hear the echo of the song as it rings through the ages – I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”  Let us go up together because movement toward worship, movement toward God, is always up.  Let us move up together through these weeks of Advent with songs of ascent.  It’s not something we have to manufacture ourselves or even spur our own selves on toward.  We can certainly spur one another on; encourage one another on.  If teammates can spur one another on after putting the ball in the basket in a particularly athletic and inspiring (and deflating for the other team) way with hand claps and cries of “Let’s goooo!” then surely we can spur one another on.

I was glad when they said to me – say it with me – “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”  And now our feet are standing with your gates, O Jerusalem, O city of peace.  O city of salvation.  O city of deliverance.  We see beyond what we can see, and we remember what happened in Jerusalem, or at least right outside of it.  I know I’m talking about Good Friday at Christmas, but the wood of the manger should always bring to mind the wood of the cross.  We know what happened just outside Jerusalem (the foundation of peace) on that Friday we call good. These lines are from Psalm 122, one of the Psalms of Ascents that go from Psalm 120 to 134.  Songs that were sung by pilgrims as they began their journey up, or made their way up, or had already made their way up. Jerusalem, built as a city that is firmly bound together – compacted. Let’s not think of this negatively though, as in an urban density kind of way, particularly in light of how urban density has traditionally been thought of as a sign of unhealthy or connected to poverty.  Let us think of it rather in light of our interconnectedness and interdependence.

We’re not meant to make this journey on our own, after all.  Let us go.  Let us go to a place of peace and justice.  Let us go to a place of thanksgiving.  Let us go to a place of transformation and renewal and restoration and revitalization.  New life.  Could such a thing be possible?  Wouldn’t you want to go?  Let’s go together.  I rejoiced when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”  Do you want that?  The invitation is there.  I remember not many years ago an electronics retailer had a Christmas ad campaign which put the consumerist orientation quite plainly (and good for them for putting it so plainly.  “I want that” was the line.  What is it that we want?  “Let us go to the house of the Lord” is the invitation.  I’ll tell you what I want.  I want to live in that house.  I want to move on up to that house.  It can’t be just me.

So let’s go dear family.

Over the weeks of Advent we’re going to be sitting with hope, peace, joy, and love.  These are not coming from nowhere because we’ve been sitting with them the whole time if you’ve been sitting with us (and if you haven’t please sit with us, you’re so welcome!).  We’re going to be looking at various scriptures, our anchor scripture each week being from the prophet Isaiah.  As we sing our songs of ascent through these weeks, it is my prayer that we may be able to look back on Advent 2022 and be able to say, “I rejoiced.”  “I was glad.”  I don’t believe this to be impossible.  I don’t think we’ve seen too much, heard too much, know too much, worry about too much, have too much to do.  I don’t believe that rejoicing and gladness are out of reach, no matter our circumstance.  I don’t believe restoration or renewal or revitalization (new life) is beyond us.  I believe that it starts here (points to heart).

The prophet Isaiah had seen much and knew much.  He consorted with kings.  He knew the pressures of family life, this son of Amoz/husband of the prophetess/father of Shearjashub (“A remnant shall return) and Mahershalalhashbaz.  He saw rulers who were more interested in bribes than justice.  He saw oppressive laws being written.  He saw the poor being robbed of their rights.  He saw the most marginalized (widows and orphans) being turned into prey.  He saw people depending on their wealth.  He saw geo-political upheaval and invasion.  He saw nations depending on arms.  He saw destruction to come. He saw a people who remained and a people who turned to God.

He saw the word of God.  He saw restoration.  Advent is not simply a countdown.  Advent is not simply a looking back, though it is a looking back.  We look back at God acting in human history in the person of the one called Emmanuel – God with us.  We look forward to the fulfillment of the kingdom of God or the reign of God.  Isaiah describes it in terms of the mountain of the Lord’s house being established as the highest of mountains, not to lord it over others but as a beacon to which all nations are drawn.  It’s a vision of diversity.  It’s a vision of people saying “Let’s go and learn the ways of God so that we can walk in God’s way together!”  Out of Zion will go forth instruction and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.  Judgement and justice will be known. 

Peace will be known.  Weapons of wear turned into instruments of agriculture.  People being fed and provided for rather than being killed.  Swords into plowshares.  Tanks turned into combine harvesters.  Spears into pruning hooks.  Assault rifles turned into garden shears.   What a jarring juxtaposition.  We’ve seen the opposite of this over the last year in Ukraine; the traditional breadbasket of Europe turned into a place of devastation and death.  It’s easy to be blinded when all we can see it what is in front of our eyes.  Isaiah invites us into a larger and longer vision.  It’s the kind of vision that we often hear in African-American spirituals. I’m gonna lay down my burden/Down by the riverside.  I’m gonna put on my long white robe/Down by the riverside.  I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield/Down by the riverside/Study war no more.  (You know that oftentimes the loudest and most meaningful calls for justice and peace come from the most oppressed.  The rest can be quite content to continue on in our comfortable lives.)  “Neither shall they learn war any more.”  

We look back and we look ahead at Advent.  Isaiah was looking ahead.  “In days to come” is how he puts it.  We know that a return of the people and an element of restoration would come to Jerusalem.  We read about it last year in Ezra and Nehemiah.  We know that in the coming of the Prince of Peace, deliverance would be made known in Jerusalem.  We know that the promise of the Holy Spirit would be made known in Jerusalem, and the ways of God would not only be taught but enabled within the people of God through the indwelling/inliving presence of the Spirit of Christ.  We’ve talked about looking back and we’ve talked about looking ahead.  We’re also called to look around us.  I said that we should not let present circumstances blind us to God’s vision.  At the same time, we are not called to be people who are blind to what is going on around us.  What does it look like for us to be called to be a people who wait well?

We’ve already heard an invitation in the call to worship sung by the Psalmist – “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”  If you’re still hearing these words then you’ve responded positively to this invitation.  Good.  Here’s another invitation from the prophet, and it’s so good and so apt and so reflected in the traditions of this season like our Advent Candles and our Christmas Eve Candlelight Service.  Are you ready for the invitation?  Here it is.  “O house of Jacob, come let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

Let us hear Jesus’ words resonate and echo.  “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but have the light of life.” (John 8:12)  “You are the light of the world.  A city built on a hill cannot be hid.” (Matt 5:14)

Come let us walk in the light of the Lord!  Let us be attentive.  What a great thing to pray.  On our Sunday away from you we took the opportunity to go with Nicole’s mom to her Greek Orthodox church, St. Constantine and St. Helen on Trethewey.  That was one of the prayers around communion.  Let us be attentive to where God is at work around us in the most unlikely places, in the most unlikely ways, or in the most unlikely people.  Let us look for God’s promises of joy and peace and love breaking through into our present.  The worship that we share together at that point turns outward (because you knew that wasn’t all about us).  Someone has put it like this:

“What stories will we tell? What examples will we live out? How will we make our space ready to receive the one who comes and the family invited to share? We can choose songs about anticipation and hope, not just completion. We can pray prayers that lean into the not yet and the invitation. We can pledge ourselves to the task of preparing the way and shouting in the wilderness that God is near to the brokenhearted. We can light the lights that speak of our confidence and joy that God is among us and desires to be known.”

We gather in the Lord’s house not to take part in an empty annual ritual, but to be restored.  To have our hearts restored; to have our gladness restored; to have our mission restored.  “You know what time it is,” writes Paul in Romans 13:11.  Now is the time to wake from sleep.  Now is the time to walk in the light of the new day that is dawning, and sing in anticipation of the Son in the same way that birds sing in anticipation of the sun.  Let’s get ahead of the day.  If you’re like me you know what it is to sleep in and let the day get away from you (I know sometimes we need the sleep).  This world – this age – rolls along, but a new age has broken in and is breaking in.  The night is far gone.  The day is near.  Let us live honourably as in the day.  Let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and all the hope, peace, joy and love he brings.

I want that.  God grant that it may be so for each of us this Advent season.

How many of us are carrying pain?

How many of us experience various hardships?

How many of us are feeling weary?

How many of us are worried, anxious or fearful?

How many of us have difficulties resting in Christ?

If we answered one of these questions with “yes, that’s me, I feel this way at times” or “I experience these things,” then this message is for us. I pray that God Almighty would open our hearts, open our minds, open our eyes, and open our ears. May we hear what God will say to us now. In Jesus' name, I pray, amen.

Our well-known text today is Matthew 11:28-30. It is part of a bigger picture: Jesus’ public ministry and His teachings. In vs. 20-24, Jesus rebukes the religious leaders and the unrepentant crowds. Then in vs. 25-27, Jesus praises God the Father and His sovereignty, and His perfect plan for redemption. Jesus knew that it is God the Father’s will that all would receive His care and His love in the same way that humble and repentant children would.

That’s why in Matthew 11:25 we read that At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.

If you were a Pharisee who thought of yourself highly, how would you feel hearing Jesus’ words, “many things are hidden from you”? After all, Pharisees were learned and educated so they would’ve expected that they would be receiving more revelations instead of having revelations hidden from them. Jesus said God’s revelations are given to infants and children. If we lived during that time, who would we be more like? A Pharisee or a child?

God’s kingdom works differently than our earthly kingdom.

In Mark 9:35-36, He [Jesus] sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Pharisees didn’t welcome children, as they found them more as a nuisance who didn’t deserve much attention. But that’s not how Jesus saw the children. If anything, Jesus wants us to come to Him the same way that little children do, to believe Him, to trust Him, to lean on Him, and rely on Him completely. That is why Jesus calls His disciples little children too. He did that after He washed His disciples’ feet after they broke the bread together at His last supper. After Judas, the betrayer, left.

Jesus said in John 13: 33-34 Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Are we obeying Jesus? Are we like little children? Because little children are usually more trusting than adults are. They have faith in people; they expect and believe they are dependent. I remember when my children were small, they would look at me with their big, beautiful trusting eyes that were full of love. I couldn’t do anything wrong in their eyes. Now that they are teenagers, it’s another story. As we are Jesus’ disciples, let us remember that He calls us little children when looking at today’s text. Amen?

Matthew 11:28 Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Jesus is not inviting those who do not sin, not who are not angry, upset, or worried but those who are weary and heavily burdened. Jesus is inviting us by saying “come to me”. Yet are we answering His invitation?

If we are not, what is stopping us from coming to Jesus?

Who is stopping us from coming to Jesus?

Are we stopping anyone from coming to Jesus? Jesus summons not the mighty or wise to come to Him. Instead, He summons the weary, the humble, and those with heavy burdens. He invites us to come just as we are to Him, with all our doubts, our pains, with our insecurities and anger outbursts, bitterness, contempt

Only as we answer Jesus’ invitation to come to Him will He give us rest. “Rest” is a gift that is unearned and free to all who come to Him. This rest is twofold.

The first part of this rest is the rest of salvation. When Jesus becomes our Savior, we receive rest and relief in our conscience when we realize that the penalty of our sins has been paid once and for all. Since Christ paid that penalty, once we pray and ask God to forgive our sins and we believe in our hearts that Jesus died for us on the cross, we are guaranteed eschatological rest. Eschatology the part of theology, that speaks of death, judgment, and destiny. Basically, the end of the present age, the end of times. But if Jesus is our Savior, we can rest for we’ll spend eternity with Jesus in heaven. We don’t need to pay penalty for our sins for Jesus paid it all.

The second rest has to do with our everyday lives, as we long for rest. We want rest and peace while we face various challenges as individuals, as families, and as the church. Often we are weary & burdened when we are overworked when things don’t happen our way, or we don’t see the results we hoped for. We get worried, anxious or stressed, for we don’t know what the future holds for us or the church. But guess what? We don’t need to know the future. We don’t need to be worried about where we will be tomorrow or where our church will be. For Jesus is the head of the church and we are His body.

Jesus in Matthew 6:34 says, “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

If you don’t have enough trouble, then do worry about tomorrow. But if you worry about tomorrow, then you are not coming to Jesus, and He cannot give you rest.

I truly love this about Jesus, He invites all of us. However, it is up to us whether we decide to accept His invitation or not. He doesn’t force us. People will force all kinds of things on us. People will coerce us and bully us to do what they want. People will manipulate us, but Jesus will never do that. He doesn’t do it because that is not in His nature! That is not who Jesus is. Jesus’ heart is full of love, humility, gentleness, and peacefulness, for He is called the Prince of Peace. Often we look to examine Jesus’ role as the Prince of Peace during Advent.

And we see Jesus’ character in the next verse.

Matthew 11:29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

1. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Jesus states that He is humble. Jesus states that He is gentle. Because of His humble & gentle heart, because people responded to His invitation to come to Him, He will give them rest for their souls. And that is why Jesus is saying, “take my yoke”. Many of us haven’t seen what a 'yoke' looks like. Yet there are over 50 references in the Bible to yokes. A yoke was a wooden frame or bar used to fasten over the necks of two animals to enable them to pull a load. There are two aspects of a yoke: 1) an image of service and 2) bondage. The literal translation of a yoke occurs in ceremonial law. But there are more Biblical references to figurative/symbolic yoke. In most cases ‘yoke’ infers a negative image. Yet, that is not how Jesus is using this word. He is using it in a positive way because He wanted also to correct the misconceptions and the wrong teachings of the Jewish teachers.

Jewish teachers spoke of bearing the yoke of God’s kingdom through the yoke of the law.

But we know from Matthew 5:17, Jesus’ words “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”

Jesus fulfilled the law, and He is God. Only God could refer to the yoke of God’s kingdom or the yoke of the law as “my yoke.” When the law was understood as a way of salvation in the Old Testament context, it became a “yoke of slavery,” but that’s not what Christ’s purpose was and is.

Galatians 5:1, For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

And not to submit to a yoke of slavery is to come to Jesus. But are we coming to Jesus? Or do we live in a yoke of slavery?

Only when we come to Jesus can we let go of our yoke of bondage. Only then we can pick up Jesus’ yoke, which is an image of service that we are doing together with Christ. Taking Jesus’ yoke means entering to submission to Him.

It means receiving His will for our lives.

It means turning control of our lives to Him.

It means receiving His plan for our lives and not worrying about tomorrow.

It means to trust God that He will supply all our needs and not wants.

If we trust that God is looking after us. If we trust that He will never leave us nor forsake us, then our burden will be light. Because we are yoked with Christ, we are not on our own. He is helping us carry the burdens and difficulties. It starts with learning from Jesus. Jesus says, learn from me but that’s not what the world teaches us.

When I went with my son to Eaton Center Indigo store, I saw countless of shelves full of self-help books. There were so many books on self-help but not on how to lean on God and who God is. No wonder we get miserable because we lean on ourselves. We lean on self-help books, as we go through 3-step books, 5-step books, 10-step books, and we fail. When we fail, we get miserable, we beat ourselves for failing, and we are far from being peaceful and having rest.

But Jesus doesn’t tell us to go through a multi-step process nor to get rest from self-help books. He is asking us to receive help from Him, to give Him all our burdens, to take His yoke, and He will give us rest for our souls. He is teaching us how to rest and how to submit ourselves to God as He did.

Jesus in Matthew 26:39 And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not what I want but what you want.”

Matthew 26:42, Again he went away for the second time and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”

Matthew 26:44 So leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words.

How many of us pray these kinds of words and truly believe them? Jesus knew that unless He trusted God the Father unless He committed Himself under the Father and His will, He would be miserable. And that’s what often happens to us: we are miserable because we want God to do our will in our lives. Even at times when we don’t explicitly say it, we act like it. If we pray and say “God can you please do this,” “God can you please do that, after all, we are doing this for you.” “God, we are doing stuff for you, why the church is still not growing?” “God, I am doing this stuff for you, and my situation has not changed.” Are we truly doing stuff for God? How could we even think this way or say these things to God? How about we are privileged when God works through us? Unless we start to think like this, we will not have rest.

If we give ourselves to God and allow Him to work through us, we will have rest. And how can we not? If we do what we are called to do, the outcome will not make us defeated because we trust that God will guide us to the best outcome. A month later we might still be doing the same things, but the outcome may be different, but we changed: our hearts changed, and our desires changed. The only way we can have rest in our souls is to remember that once we take the yoke of Jesus, we are guided by a stronger partner. When we are weary, we can lean on Him.

When we are anxious, we should do as Peter says in 1 Peter 5:7-8, Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary, the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.

Disciplining means taking our thoughts captive, being alert, and not becoming chow for the devil. I know that this is the key in overcoming devil’s attacks.

When I was sick with COVID, I couldn’t do any work for church or school or even to do anything at home. It was a very difficult time for me. I had to repeat Matthew 11:28-30 in the middle of the night over and over until I felt this inward rest. My situation didn’t change, but I received rest and peace of Christ when I focused on Christ instead of my circumstances. It is our relationship with Jesus that changes us on the inside. It gives us an inward rest, free from anxieties even when we go through trials and tribulations.

Hebrews 12:7-8, Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children, for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children.

So, if we are God’s children we will go through discipline, we will go through trials, but we can rest in Christ, for we know that God loves us and He is taking care of us because he is our loving Father. But we need to come to Him and submit ourselves to Him.

Jesus will give us the promised blessing, He will give us rest.

Yet, never make a mistake that this rest will be not doing anything for the rest of our life, and will look like putting our feet up, watching TV or Netflix, or YouTube videos or playing games on the computer.

We can do that, but then we also do what God called us to do.

And when we do what He called us to do, we will have this whole new energy and a new motive.

We come to Jesus by faith, for our object of faith is not a church, a creed, or a pastor but the living Christ. Our salvation is in the Person of Christ and not in methods. Our rest is in Christ and not in systems nor processes.

Jesus in John 16:33 said I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution, but take courage: I have conquered the world!”

And if we believe that Christ has conquered the world, we can rest in Him, for His church will prevail. He is the Head, and we are the body. We can rest in Christ, and even when we don’t see differences in our situation, in our finances, in our relationships or our health. We can rest in Christ, for we trust Him. He is God, and we are not.

Jesus' yoke is not lighter because He expects less of us, but it is because He bears more of the load. We can rest in Christ, for He has conquered the world. We can rest in Christ because He told us, ‘Come to me all who are weary and heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.’

But are we trusting Jesus and accepting His invitation to receive His promised rest?

Someone has described the situation like this: “We are already God’s children but do not yet see him face to face. We are already heirs but have not yet received our full inheritance. We are already glorified but have not yet been accorded our final glory. In the “not yet” time of this life we struggle in the midst of suffering and sacrifice”.  Followers of Christ face mortality.  Followers of Christ face persecution for their faith and suffering. How can we talk about having moved into a new realm or gone from death to life or slavery to freedom in Christ or dying with Christ to be raised to new life when we look around us?

We talked last week about being children of God; of no longer being slaves to fear. This does not mean that the follower of Christ is immune to suffering.  We find in fact that suffering marks the path to glory.  Paul was someone who had an unshakeable confidence in the love of God and an unshakeable hope in the promises of God.  Paul was also a man who knew suffering in way few of us might be able to imagine.  Paul had no fear of the hardships that he had experienced – afflictions, calamities (shipwreck), beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleeplessness nights, and hunger.  I feel like in my own life I’ve barely known suffering for Christ.  I’ve hardly ever even been mocked for it, even as a child. We don’t know what lies ahead of us of course.  Societal collapse.  State-sponsored persecution for our faith.  Who can say?  It’s been happening to Christians for over 2,000 years now, and there’s no reason to think we’re immune to it.  Troubles from without, troubles from within.  Illness. Our mortality.  Doubts.  Questions that arise like “How would I face persecution?”  “Maybe I’m suffering for a reason” or “What if I awake on the other side of death and find out I’ve been fooled?”  “What if I don’t wake up at all?”  “Where will the love of God be then?”  Paul has the courage to lay these questions out on the table.  We do well to consider them.  Whenever I’ve spoken about my feeling that I’ve never really suffered for my faith, I’ve had some of the dear elders in our congregation tell me that they pray that I would be ready for any persecution when it comes.  Let us all be ever ready for what may come as we persevere together. Let’s get rooted and grounded in these truths now so that we’re not casting about or flailing about blindly in the midst of calamity or loss.  Let us look at the question “Why did Paul hold such unshakeable hope?”

  “I consider (not just a matter of personal belief but a firm conviction) that the sufferings of this present time (the now time) are not with comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” (18)  As followers of Christ we take the long view.  This does not mean we’re blind to what’s going on around us, and the hope in which we live is meant to inform our present in significant ways.  I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.  We know about the kind of glory that we may seek, or ascribe to others, or that is ascribed to us by others.  Gridiron glory if you’re a football fan.  Death or glory as the saying goes.  Fame.  Renown.  Making a name for ourselves.  What does it all mean in the end?  A chasing after wind?  What does it mean when the centre cannot hold or the diagnosis comes?  Glory.  What kind of glory do we mean when we talk about the glory of God or being glorified with God?  The Old Testament talks about the weight of glory.  It talks of the glory of God as being the manifestation of God’s presence.  We look forward to a whole new manifestation of God’s presence when the home of God is among mortals, and He will dwell with them, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  To be glorified with God means to share or participate fully in the eternal life and fellowship of God the Father, Jesus, the Son, and the Holy Spirit of God.  This has not yet come.  This is the unseen thing, for we don’t hope for what we see.  It is the unseen future toward which we look forward, and which colours each moment in which we live. We wait with eager longing or eager anticipation.  We find that we do not wait alone.  We find here that the deliverance brought about by Jesus is not just for humanity but for all of creation.  “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…”  How wonderful that we can be reminded of truths about God in creation particularly if you have a pet at home, who waits with eager expectation for good things.  How wonderful it is that birds sing in the morning before the sun comes up, in anticipation of the sunrise.  God’s restoration plan is for all that God has made.  Creation was subjected to futility through our failure, through our messing up.  Deliverance is truly cosmic.  This is why we sing at Christmas “No more let sins or sorrows grow/Nor thorns infest the ground/He comes to make His blessing known/Far as the curse is found.”  Creation itself waits with eager expectation for the day when it will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  In the meantime creation groans.  May we hear the groans of creation too.  May we ask ourselves how we are called to take part in God’s restorative work now; how we are called to live in light of the hope contained in those words “Look, I am making all things new.”

In the meantime, we groan, alongside creation like a woman in the throes of labour pains.  Not in despair, but with longing.  Not in defeat but in confident expectation of new life.  Why confident?  We have the Holy Spirit in us.  We have the first fruits of the Spirit in us as we wait. We have the appetizer or the amuse bouche if the restaurant is very fancy which is a foretaste (a pre-taste) of the meal that is coming or the banquet we will share.  This enables us to wait with patience and with perseverance.  We find that the Holy Spirit is also making noise in this section of Paul’s letter, praying for us with sighs too deep for words.  Sometimes we don’t even know what to say to God.  Sometimes we feel we can only groan to God.  The Holy Spirit knows our heart, and God knows the mind of the Spirit, and we are caught up in this divine relationship and intertwinedness even then.

So we know, followers of Christ.  So we know, you who love God.  Remember that Paul is addressing these words to followers of Jesus, and he here he refers to them (us) as “those who love God.”  We know, you who love God, that all things work together for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.  Let this not be a pious “there there” that we say to someone who is suffering acutely, or someone for whom things are falling apart. This is not simply an “everything will turn out ok” circumstance-wise because we know that often things do not turn out ok or how we would like them to turn out.  Paul is talking big picture here, the biggest picture.  We who love God may rest in the truth God works with any circumstance in which we find ourselves to bring about God’s saving purpose – to bring about the goal toward which humanity and all creation is moving; the making of all things new and a sharing in the glory of God’s presence. 

You who love God, God knew you before the foundations of the earth were laid.  God destined you to be conformed to the image of his Son before the foundations of the world were laid. 

Interlude

Paul is not trying to come down on any side of a predestination debate here, but I do want to pause and say a couple of things.  You may know that there has been much debate among theologians around predestination, double or single, supralapsarian, infralapsarian, Calvinist, Arminian, free-will Baptists, peculiar Baptists.  If you don’t, don’t worry about it for now.  I will say though, that I believe we run into trouble when we try to apply timelines (and ask questions like “What came first, foreknowledge or predestining?” to a God that exists outside of linear time.  We get into trouble when we try to apply logic to faith – something that at heart, a mystery.  Even Mr. Spock found that logic failed as he went through his experiences aboard the Starship Enterprise; he needed the Vulcan side and the human side.  In the incomprehensible mystery that is faith, God plays a role in predestining us before we were born.  We also have a role to play in responding to God’s call in faith and trust.  If we put it all on God or thought that faith is solely God making arbitrary decisions, we might say “Well I guess I just wasn’t predestined – too bad for me” or too bad for whomever.  If we thought that we have come to faith solely because of us – because we studied the religions of the world and we came to this logical conclusion – we would leave out the truth of faith as unmerited gift from God.  We hold both of these to be true, we who love God.  I can say confidently that Jesus took hold of me and continues to hang onto me.  My response is to cling onto him.  We can use the example of falling in love.  We know that falling in love goes beyond us making a logical decision based on a set of factors.  Sometimes all the factors are there, and you feel nothing.  When it comes to falling in love, alongside decision making there exists the truth that some things are meant to be. (surely Elvis wasn’t wrong)

End of Interlude   

“Those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified (makes right, forgives); and those whom he justified he also glorified.”  Paul is talking big picture here, and in true Biblical style, he’s talking about a promise of God that is to come as if it has already happened.  We live in the in-between time in the Spirit of God, who enables us to bring those promises for the future into our present.

We bring God’s promises for the future into our present by standing on them; by being reminded of them; by reminding one another of them.  We come back to them time and time again, not only when the howling wind of fear and doubt assail us.  I said last week that we have nothing to fear and I know that sometimes I find myself afraid anyway.  I know I speak of unshakeable confidence in the love of God and I know that doubts creep in.  I hear the liar’s voice, the accuser’s voice.  I know that we struggle with circumstances of our lives.  Our sister Bonnie Hartley died this past May.  Bonnie faced many struggles in her life.  Bonnie wanted to continually hear about and be reminded of God’s grace.  She wanted the second half of the passage today read at her funeral.  I’m going to read it now with very little comment:

³¹ What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³² He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³ Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? It is Christ^[a] who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. ³⁵ Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? ³⁶ As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 Followers of Christ through the ages, from Paul on down to Bonnie have lived with unshakeable confidence in the love of God.  One of them is John Chrysostom (literally John Golden-mouth, so well did he speak).   He spoke out against abuse of authority and glorification of leaders.  He faced opposition.  He faced exile.  Here are some words he wrote  about assurance:

“The waters have risen, and severe storms are upon us, but we do not fear drowning, for we stand firmly upon a rock. Let the sea rage, it cannot break the rock. Let the waves rise, they cannot sink the boat of Jesus.

What are we to fear? Death? Life to me means Christ, and death is gain. Exile? ‘The earth and its fullness belong to the Lord. The confiscation of goods? We brought nothing into this world, and we shall surely take nothing from it.

I have only contempt for the world’s threats, I find its blessings laughable. I have no fear of poverty, no desire for wealth. I am not afraid of death nor do I long to live, except for your good. I concentrate therefore on the present situation, and I urge you, my friends, to have confidence.”

May this be true for each of us, dear family.

Amen

Someone has described the situation like this: “We are already God’s children but do not yet see him face to face. We are already heirs but have not yet received our full inheritance. We are already glorified but have not yet been accorded our final glory. In the “not yet” time of this life we struggle in the midst of suffering and sacrifice”.  Followers of Christ face mortality.  Followers of Christ face persecution for their faith and suffering. How can we talk about having moved into a new realm or gone from death to life or slavery to freedom in Christ or dying with Christ to be raised to new life when we look around us?

We talked last week about being children of God; of no longer being slaves to fear. This does not mean that the follower of Christ is immune to suffering.  We find in fact that suffering marks the path to glory.  Paul was someone who had an unshakeable confidence in the love of God and an unshakeable hope in the promises of God.  Paul was also a man who knew suffering in way few of us might be able to imagine.  Paul had no fear of the hardships that he had experienced – afflictions, calamities (shipwreck), beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleeplessness nights, hunger.  I feel like in my own life I’ve barley know suffering for Christ.  I’ve hardly ever even been mocked for it, even as a child. We don’t know what lies ahead of us of course.  Societal collapse.  State sponsored persecution for our faith.  Who can say?  It’s been happening to Christians for over 2,000 years now and there’s no reason to think we’re immune to it.  Troubles from without, troubles from within.  Illness. Our mortality.  Doubts.  Questions that arise like “How would I face persecution?”  “Maybe I’m suffering for a reason” or “What if I awake on the other side of death and find out I’ve been fooled?”  “What if I don’t wake up at all?”  “Where will the love of God be then?”  Paul has the courage to lay these questions out on the table.  We do well to consider them.  Whenever I’ve spoken about my feeling that I’ve never really suffered for my faith, I’ve had some of the dear elders in our congregation tell me that they pray that I would be ready for any persecution when it comes.  Let us all be ever ready for what may come as we persevere together. Let’s get rooted and grounded in these truths now so that we’re not casting about or flailing about blindly in the midst of calamity or loss.  Let us look at the question “Why did Paul hold such unshakeable hope?”

  “I consider (not just a matter of personal belief but a firm conviction) that the sufferings of this present time (the now time) are not with comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” (18)  As followers of Christ we take the long view.  This does not mean we’re blind to what’s going on around us, and the hope in which we live is meant to inform our present in significant ways.  I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.  We know about the kind of glory that we may seek, or ascribe to others, or that is ascribed to us by others.  Gridiron glory if you’re a football fan.  Death or glory as the saying goes.  Fame.  Renown.  Making a name for ourselves.  What does it all mean in the end?  A chasing after wind?  What does it mean when the centre cannot hold or the diagnosis comes?  Glory.  What kind of glory do we mean when we talk about the glory of God or being glorified with God?  The Old Testament talks about the weight of glory.  It talks of the glory of God as being the manifestation of God’s presence.  We look forward to a whole new manifestation of God’s presence when the home of God is among mortals, and He will dwell with them, and God himself will be with them and be their God.  To be glorified with God means to share or participate fully in the eternal life and fellowship of God the Father, Jesus, the Son, and the Holy Spirit of God.  This has not yet come.  This is the unseen thing, for we don’t hope for what we see.  It is the unseen future toward which we look forward, and which colours each moment in which we live. We wait with eager longing, or eager anticipation.  We find that we do not wait alone.  We find here that the deliverance brought about by Jesus is not just for humanity but for all of creation.  “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…”  How wonderful that we can be reminded of truths about God in creation particularly if you have a pet at home, who waits with eager expectation for good things.  How wonderful it is that birds sing in the morning before the sun comes up, in anticipation of the sunrise.  God’s restoration plan is for all that God has made.  Creation was subjected to futility through our failure, through our messing up.  Deliverance is truly cosmic.  This is why we sing at Christmas “No more let let sins or sorrows grow/Nor thorns infest the ground/He comes to make His blessing known/Far as the curse is found.”  Creation itself waits with eager expectation for the day when it will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  In the meantime creation groans.  May we hear the groans of creation too.  May we ask ourselves how we are called to take part in God’s restorative work now; how we are called to live in light of the hope contained in those words “Look, I am making all things new.”

In the meantime, we groan, alongside creation like a woman in the throes of labour pains.  Not in despair, but with longing.  Not in defeat but in confident expectation of new life.  Why condifent?  We have the Holy Spirit in us.  We have the first fruits of the Spirit in us as we wait. We have the appetizer or the amuse bouche if the restaurant is very fancy which is a foretaste (a pre-taste) of the meal that is coming or the banquet we will share.  This enables us to wait with patience and with perseverance.  We find that the Holy Spirit is also making noise in this section of Paul’s letter, praying for us with sighs too deep for words.  Sometimes we don’t even know what to say to God.  Sometimes we feel we can only groan to God.  The Holy Spirit knows our heart and God knows the mind of the Spirit and we are caught up in this divine relationship and intertwinedness even then.

So we know, followers of Christ.  So we know, you who love God.  Remember that Paul is addressing these words to followers of Jesus, and he here he refers to them (us) as “those who love God.”  We know, you who love God, that all things work together for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.  Let this not be a pious “there there” that we say to someone who is suffering acutely, or someone for whom things are falling apart. This is not simply a “everything will turn out ok” circumstance-wise because we know that often things do not turn out ok or how we would like them to turn out.  Paul is talking big picture here, the biggest picture.  We who love God may rest in the truth God works with any circumstance in which we find ourselves to bring about God’s saving purpose – to bring about the goal toward which humanity and all creation is moving; the making of all things new and a sharing in the glory of God’s presence. 

You who love God, God knew you before the foundations of the earth were laid.  God destined you to be conformed to the image of his Son before the foundations of the world were laid. 

Interlude

Paul is not trying to come down on any side of a predestination debate here but I do want to pause and say a couple of things.  You may know that there has been much debate among theologians around predestination, double or single, supralapsarian, infralapsarian, Calvinist, Arminian, free-will Baptists, peculiar Baptists.  If you don’t, don’t worry about it for now.  I will say though, that I believe we run into trouble when we try to apply timelines (and ask questions like “What came first, foreknowledge or predestining?” to a God that exists outside of linear time.  We get into trouble when we try to apply logic to faith – something that at heart a mystery.  Even Mr. Spock found that logic failed as he went through his experiences aboard the Starship Enterprise, he needed the Vulcan side and the human side.  In the incomprehensible mystery that is faith, God plays a role in predestining us before we were born.  We also have a roll to play in responding to God’s call in faith and trust.  If we put it all on God or thought that faith is solely God making arbitrary decisions, we might say “Well I guess I just wasn’t predestined – too bad for me” or too bad for whomever.  If we thought that we have come to faith solely because of us – because we studied the religions of the world and we came to this logical conclusion – we would leave out the truth of faith as unmerited gift from God.  We hold both of these to be true, we who love God.  I can say confidently that Jesus took hold of me and continues to hang onto me.  My response is to cling onto him.  We can use the example of falling in love.  We know that falling in love goes beyond us making a logical decision based on a set of factors.  Sometimes all the factors are there and you feel nothing.  When it comes to falling in love, alongside decision making there exists the truth that some things are meant to be. (surely Elvis wasn’t wrong)

End of Interlude   

“Those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified (makes right, forgives); and those whom he justified he also glorified.”  Paul is talking big picture here and in true Biblical style, he’s talking about a promise of God that is to come as if it has already happened.  We live in the in-between time in the Spirit of God, who enables us to bring those promises for the future into our present.

We bring God’s promises for the future into our present by standing on them; by being reminded of them; by reminding one another of them.  We come back to them time and time again, not only when the howling wind of fear and doubt assail us.  I said last week that we have nothing to fear and I know that sometimes I find myself afraid anyway.  I know I speak of unshakeable confidence in the love of God and I know that doubts creep in.  I hear the liar’s voice, the accuser’s voice.  I know that we struggle with circumstances of our lives.  Our sister Bonnie Hartley died this past May.  Bonnie faced many struggles in her life.  Bonnie wanted to continually hear about and be reminded of God’s grace.  She wanted the second half of the passage today read at her funeral.  I’m going to read it now with very little comment:

³¹ What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³² He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³ Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? It is Christ^[a] who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. ³⁵ Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? ³⁶ As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;     we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 Followers of Christ through the ages, from Paul on down to Bonnie have lived with unshakeable confidence in the love of God.  One of them is John Chrysostom (literally John Golden-mouth, so well did he speak).   He spoke out against abuse of authority and glorification of leaders.  He faced opposition.  He faced exile.  Here are some words he wrote  about assurance:

“The waters have risen and severe storms are upon us, but we do not fear drowning, for we stand firmly upon a rock. Let the sea rage, it cannot break the rock. Let the waves rise, they cannot sink the boat of Jesus.

What are we to fear? Death? Life to me means Christ, and death is gain. Exile? ‘The earth and its fullness belong to the Lord. The confiscation of goods? We brought nothing into this world, and we shall surely take nothing from it.

I have only contempt for the world’s threats, I find its blessings laughable. I have no fear of poverty, no desire for wealth. I am not afraid of death nor do I long to live, except for your good. I concentrate therefore on the present situation, and I urge you, my friends, to have confidence.”

May this be true for each of us, dear family.

Amen

We’re gathering around the family table today.  We hear Paul’s message that in Christ and through the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, we are family.  It’s not just a matter of God treating us like family.  We are family (I’ve got all my sisters and brothers and me).  Come on everybody sing!  “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (8:1)  This is surely worth singing about.  Remember when we paused and praised God with Paul for peace – “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (5:`1)  Truly though we are called to praise, because this is not just theology we’re talking about in terms of an objective discussion about what we believe about God and who we are as God’s children.  The whole chapter is a tribute of adoration of God and love of God and praise to God.  We’re in Romans 8 – a section of Paul’s letter that can be seen as a sort of high mid-point.  Someone has said that it begins with “no condemnation” and ends with “no separation.”  In between, it’s “no defeat.” 

Let us remember who we are and let us remember whose we are.  Someone said in one of our Bible reflection times recently that the reason that Paul wrote these words to the Christians in Rome (and the reason that we read them today and sit with them and reflect on them and pray over them) is because we need to be reminded of the truths they contain as followers of Christ.

Absolutely!  So let us be reminded.

You have the Holy Spirit of God in you. The Holy Spirit of Christ.  You are a people called to live life in the Spirit.  Life in the Spirit is life.  Life now.  Life to come. 

A promise is made by God in the book of the prophet Ezekiel. ¹⁹ I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, (Ez 11:19)    ²⁶ A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. (Ez 36:26-27)  Listen to what happens in chapter 37:1-10.

In the Holy Spirit of God, a new people is made.  Listen to this vision which follows in Ezekiel 37.

37 The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. ² He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. ³ He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’ ⁴ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. ⁵ Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. ⁶ I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’

⁷ So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. ⁸ I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them. ⁹ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ ¹⁰ I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. (Ez 37:1-10)

Let us stand, a vast multitude; standing with one another; standing with those who’ve gone before us (we are marking All Saints Day); standing/situated in the grace of Christ with the Holy Spirit living in us.  Stand with us for this is life.  Everyone wants life.  Everyone wants the good life.  What is the good life exactly?  What is life that transcends any circumstance or situation we find ourselves in?  The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is the Spirit who gives life.   

We have heard about our God who calls into existence things which did not exist.  We have heard of our God who brings life from death.  God has done what we could not do for ourselves. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do (the law could tell us how to live in harmony with God and humanity and creation, but it couldn’t enable us to do it); by sending his own Son (Himself) in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”

We remember the cross, particularly on days we gather around the family table.  In one of the great paradoxes of the faith, Christ, who knew no sin, was made sin so that we might be forgiven and so that we might walk in newness of life.  In his birth and death and resurrection, Christ fulfilled the law – gathered it up into himself and brought it to a higher plane (a whole other level) – so that the just requirements of the law (again summarized with “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbour as yourself”) might be fulfilled in us through the power of the Holy Spirit living in us.

This is who you are, dear brothers and sisters in Christ.  Get on board the deliverance train.  It’s a movement from life in the flesh.  By “life in the flesh,” Paul doesn’t mean the physical world here, like the physical world is bad and we should focus on things of the mind.  Living in the flesh is, as we said last week, living without regard to God as gracious and loving creator; putting something or someone (often ourself) in the place of God. Life influenced by rebellion and often turned in on itself.  It means to live in such a mindset or focus or orientation. Life in the Spirit is not just some spiritual otherworldly existence, but life lived in grateful and loving recognition of God as loving creator and Jesus as gracious deliverer from the sin from which we cannot extricate ourselves.  It is a mindset or orientation toward Christ.  Life lived in the Spirit.  Life which is truly life.  The Holy Spirit in us.  Someone has said, “The Holy Spirit is not some impersonal force, but the life-giving presence and power of the risen Lord among his followers.”  John Stott put it like this, “The Christian life is essentially life in the Spirit, that is to say, a life that is animated, sustained, directed and enriched by the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, true Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, indeed impossible.”

The Holy Spirit is named 15 times in the first 17 verses of this chapter.  The Holy Spirit setting us free to defeat disordered relationship or the human tendency to mess things up.  The Holy Spirit creating a new people.  The presence of God in us (God with us – God in us) in the Spirit who is life because of righteousness.  The promise of a transformed heart through the one who condemned sin in the flesh so that the just requirement might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  What is the righteous requirement of the law but to love?  The Holy Spirit living inside you in this most intimate of relationships, pouring God’s love into your heart, enabling love of God and others – because as Paul will say a little later, whoever loves has fulfilled the law. (13:8) We get this, don’t we?  The Holy Spirit enabling love in us that we know did not come from us.  The Holy Spirit enabling forgiveness in us that we know could not have come from us.  The Holy Spirit enabling hospitality in us that we know did not come from us.  The nudging of the Holy Spirit in our hearts to seek forgiveness or to seek restored relationship.  This is what it means to live.

Life now and life to come.  Paul looks ahead in the same we look ahead when we gather around the family table.  “If the Spirit of him, who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwells in you.”  The Spirit that God has given as a gift is the pledge and a sign of the resurrection life for us that is to come.  Paul closely ties together the resurrection of Jesus, the gift of the Spirit, transformative life in the Spirit, and life in the age to come.

To be in Christ is to move from death to life; from slavery to sin to freedom in Christ.  We are debtors, but we need to be clear who we are in debt to and how we pay it.  We have been set free for life as adopted sons and daughters of God.  We are debtors, but not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh (and again this idea of life in the flesh as one without orientation toward God).  By the Spirit, put to death those deeds – pride, jealousy, envy, strife, self-absorption, slander, the pursuit of acquisition, grasping.  By the Spirit, put to death those deeds, for all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.  ^“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.”  (8:15) This is our family.  What are we so afraid of?

We did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear and frustration and futility.  I have no need to construct my own life and worth.  Why?  We have received, rather, a spirit of adoption.  Adoption!  What a wonderful event!  New life!  New family!  But you have received a spirit of adoption.  I’m no longer a slave to fear, I am a child of God.  The Holy Spirit is the mark of our adoption in the same way the court stamps or seals adoption papers to signal that they are authentic and validate the adopted one’s status as beloved family member.   I have the Holy Spirit living in me.  I am assured of my status before God. You know why?  “When we cry “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ (Joint heirs with Jesus as we travel this sod/ For I’m part of the family, the family of God).  Abba – the familiar, familial, loving term which we might best describe as “Daddy” (though for me it would be “Dad” because I don’t ever remember saying “Daddy” and my familiar/loving term was “Dad).  Abba.  The same term Jesus used.  In Jesus and in the Spirit of God we are so thoroughly a part of the life of the divine that we may, without fear, use the same term.  May we seek times of silence in which we stop, and pray “Abba…Father.”  May the Spirit enable us to hear “You are my beloved child.”

We are debtors in this family.  What is it that we owe?  By this I mean, for the one who walks in newness of life in the Holy Spirit of God, what is the good and fitting and proper response on our part to God’s delivering grace and love?  It’s the same as it is for any family.  It’s the opposite of the things that destroy families – insults, criticisms, lies, looking out for self first, gossip.  May God help us to give what we owe.  What do we owe one another in our families? Let’s look again at 13:8 – “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”  May our prayer be “Abba! Father!  Teach us to love.”  The one who makes us new in this family is the one we remember and celebrate today.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.  Amen.

So let us brace ourselves!  Let us pray to God for help this morning too as we meditate on God’s word here in Romans 7.  As we start here I want to lay down a bit of a foundation for what God has laid on my heart to say.  We’ve been looking at how Paul is describing life in Christ; how in Christ we are moved from the realm of sin and death to the realm of Christ.  We are freed from slavery or servitude to sin and death that we might become slaves of Christ (and in so doing find freedom).  Throughout the letter, Paul has made allusions to “the law” which we have largely been ignoring, apart from saying some weeks ago that before the law came, there was grace and faith (in the story of Abraham).  Before the law came, deliverance came for the people of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (aka “Israel”).  We’re talking the big story of salvation/deliverance here.  After the people were delivered from slavery in Egypt and passed through the waters of the Red Sea (and you see what’s going on here in terms of the later deliverance that would come through Jesus and us passing through the waters) After this, Moses came down from a mountain with 10 laws (10 commandments, decalogue) which are part of 613 laws known in Hebrew as the mitzvot.  The entire law was summed up by Jesus when he was asked which is the greatest commandment of the law. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”  The second is like it – “Love your neighbour as yourself.” 

Paul has brushed up against the subject of these laws already.   In 3:20 the law gives us knowledge of sin.  In 5: 20 sin causes trespass to be multiplied, meaning that through the law. our tendency to mess things up or disorder relationships was seen in light of the way in which we transgress (literally step across) God’s laws. Finally, in describing how the follower of Christ moves from the realm of the flesh (simply described as an orientation to the world without reference to God as gracious loving creator) to the realm of the Spirit (life lived in grateful trust in God’s gift of grace in Christ), Paul writes of how the follower of Christ is discharged from the law, and dead to that which held us captive (sin).

The fact that Paul is talking about the law and sin in the same breath leads to the next question, which Paul spends the rest of the chapter answering – “Does this mean that the law is sin?”  Is the law in some way bad or evil?  Is the law the problem?  The law which is summed up “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbour as yourself.”  By.  No.  Means.  No matter where we may stand on the questions around this chapter – is Paul writing about himself, is this a description of the Christian struggling with sin? – one of the fundamental truths which Paul illustrates is that in Christ, humanity is delivered from the grip of something from which we were unable to extricate ourselves.  Paul is showing that the whole Kingdom of God project is not simply a way for us to achieve a better moral standing; be better people; follow these rules that God lays out in the 10 commandments and we’re good. The Kingdom of God is not simply a moral project.  The kingdom project for the follower of Christ means a whole new heart.  It means the fulfillment of the promise that God would write his instructions on our hearts. This is where we’re going to end up this morning.

To start though let me say I’m working from the point of view that in using “I,” Paul is talking about the human condition, and inserting himself in the human condition.  I’m working from the point of view that when Paul speaks of inner conflict Paul is speaking as a follower of Christ who is looking back from the standpoint of grace to life before we encountered Jesus Christ.  “Sold into slavery under sin” which we read in the passage hardly describes the life of the follower of Christ who has been set free from slavery to sin (see 6:18).  At the same time, I recognize that echoes of this inner conflict – not doing the good that we want and doing the evil we do not want -reverberate in our lives as followers of Christ. 

The law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good.  The law is a gift from God, showing how to live in harmony with God and with one another.  At the same time, law cannot be something on which a relationship is founded.  Paul uses the example of marriage to describe how the follower of Christ has been discharged from the law.  We can use the same example to who how law/regulations/obligations cannot serve as the foundation of a relationship.  Spouses have legal obligations toward one another, but merely following legal obligations does not equal love.  We can look at the relationship between parents and children in the same way.  Parents have a legal obligation toward children, but this cannot provide a loving basis for a relationship.   The foundation of God’s relationship with humanity is love.  The foundation of our relationship with God is love – which we hear in the summary of the law which Paul echoes when he writes that love is the fulfillment of the law. (13:8)

The law is holy and just and good. Sin takes what is intended to be a good thing and uses it as an ally to bring about disordered relationships, separation from God, death.  The law itself provides no power to obey it.  The law made sin known in a very sharp way.  It is not that there was no sin before the law was given, but that once the law was given, our tendency to mess things up became known as an affront against God.  We can think of this in terms of a young child who starts to tease the family cat -pokes the poor cat while it’s trying to sleep (which the cat is trying to do a majority of the time).  The cat doesn’t seem to like it.  It complains, hisses even.  It seems wrong, but the child can’t stop it.  The child’s mother tells him “Stop teasing the cat!”  What was simply seen vaguely as something wrong becomes a transgression (crossing over) a command that has been given by the one who gave the child life. We found ourselves unable to help ourselves.  “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’”  This is where the idea of disordered desire comes in, whether it’s the neigbhour’s wife, or their field, or their servants, or their oxen and donkeys.  It’s one of those sins that goes to the deepest parts of our hearts.  It can be hidden, unlike things like theft or murder which are quite apparent.  It’s our tendency to live with grasping hands rather than open hands.  The pursuit of acquisition.  Sin established a beachhead in the law.  Sin became an occupying power.  “But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all sorts of covetousness.”  Knowing that something is wrong can become the only reason we need to do it.  Augustine in his Confession wrote of how, when he was a young boy, he and his friends would steal pears from a neighbour’s orchard simply for the sake of stealing them. Mark Twain said that a mule, like a person, will do the opposite of what they’re told “Just for the sake of meanness.”  “Sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.” 

Here’s the conflict.  The law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good.  It is righteous – meaning it is all about rightness and living in harmony with our creator God, with one another, and with all that God has created.  At the same time it cannot bring about righteousness.  It’s been taken over by an occupying force which is using it to its own ends.  Someone has compared it to a person ordering the installation of an alarm system in their house. There has been a rash of break-and-enters in the neighbourhood.  On the day that workers come to install it, the homeowner is in quarantine situation – can’t leave their bedroom.  They ask a neighbour to oversee things.  The neighbour gets to see the inner workings of the alarm system, how to prime it, disable it, bypass it.  The neighbour starts to get ideas about some break and enters of his own.  What was intended for good has been taken over by a force outside of itself, and becomes a vehicle for evil (theft in this case, again reflecting that whole covetousness idea)?

What does all this talk about ancient law and sin have to do with the world?  I think there’s a question here that is raised by Paul’s words.  What’s going to save the world?  Assuming we think the world is in need of saving (and if we don’t I say take a good look around).

Or do we think the world is beyond saving?  All of this talk is meaningless so let us eat, drink, and be merry.   Have a good time.  Which is fine I suppose, if you have the means.  Or maybe we’ll be saved by achieving immortality through consciousness uploads – which again is fine I suppose if you have the means.  As long as the servers don’t shut down.

Where do we stand on this question of “Who will save us?” as followers of Christ, and what are the implications of our stance?  The truth here that Paul is putting forward is one of humanity enslaved by sin.  This truth puts in check the proud notion that we have it within ourselves to save ourselves.  A new head of state will not save us.  Not that there’s anything inherently bad about any of these things – it is more the fact that they fall prey to the same sin which used the law for its own purposes.  Will education save us?  Will an economic system save us?  Will an infusion of money save us?  Will nanobots and artificial intelligence save us?  Will an institution save us?

Who or what does the world need?  Who do I need?  Human will alone is not going to do it.  “I do not understand my own actions,” writes Paul, “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing hate.”  This does not mean, for Paul, that anybody is naturally bad or evil.  Never let that kind of thinking intrude.  How many children are told that there is something wrong with them or that they’re bad kids?  There’s nothing wrong with you.  “But in fact, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.”  Knowledge is good and the more knowledge the better, generally speaking.  Knowledge won’t save.  Knowledge of what is right and what is wrong will not save us. “For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self,” Paul writes, “but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”  Here’s how The Message puts it -  “It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.”

Something other than the law would be required.  We know where this is going!  “Wretched man that I am!  Who will save me from this body of death!”   And then this – “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Let us sit with that for a little while. Jesus died for my sins.  Jesus died for your sins.  Yes.  We may respond to this news with something like “How nice” – particularly if we see our sins as peccadillos, usually expressed (silently or not) as we’re driving and frustrated by others.  We heard last week about the shattering power of grace.  We sang last week – “Death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered.”  This is the new situation that Jesus, in his death and resurrection has brought about.  The shattering of this power from which we were unable to extricate ourselves.  This power that went beyond our wills and our knowledge.  This power so insidious that it infects and effects any system, any institution (even the church).  Who will save us?  Who is it that we need?  There’s another song that goes “Give me Jesus/You can have all this world/Give me Jesus.”  In the morning when I rise.  When I am alone.  When I come to die.  Give me Jesus.   Someone has said, “Without Christ, the law could only inform, but the Spirit would transform.”

A new life.  Walking in the Spirit.  Walking in newness of life.  Life in the Spirit.  This is where we’ll go next week.  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Amen

Who are we, precisely, as slaves or servants of Christ?  Who are we as people who live under the realm or under the dominion of Christ?  What will this mean in terms of how we live?  In order to look at this question, Paul starts with a question that seems rather absurd.  Paul is using the rhetorical technique of anticipating and answering his listener’s questions.  You heard me do this last week when I anticipated a question or objection that you might have been having about me being some sort of poetic wannabe who spends his time looking up at trees and leaves.  Paul has been talking about the peace, joy and hope that we have in Jesus; the grace in which we stand and to which we have been given access through faith/trust in Christ Jesus.  For the first time, Paul is going to touch on what this means in terms of how we live.  He’s going to talk about where the follower of Christ stands in relation to sin/disordered relationships/HPTMTU.  At the end of Chapter 5, Paul writes of how through the trespass of one man (Adam), sin came for all, through one man’s act of righteousness (Jesus and the cross) came righteousness for all.  Then we hear this – “…where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, just as sin exercised dominion in death, so grace might also exercise dominion through justification, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (5:20b-21)

This gives rise to the question that Paul poses through his imaginary conversational partner – “What then are we to say?  Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?”

Abundant sin led to super-abundant grace.  A led to B and B is good, therefore more A should be good too right? On the surface, the question may seem absurd.  Someone has likened it to picturing the prodigal son some years after his return home.  The prodigal son had asked for his inheritance early, cut off relations with the father who provided it, went off and squandered it in riotous living.  He was welcomed home, and a party was thrown.  Everyone was happy (except for big brother but that’s a story for another day).  Imagine if, a few years later, the prodigal son decided to steal a few things, sneak off in the middle of the light, go back out for some more riotous living so that he could come back and experience the welcome and the party and the grace all over again.

Absurd?  Maybe not completely.  I don’t think we do well when we make get presumptuous in most cases, and certainly not when we make presumptions about the goodness of God.  When asked by a priest if he thought God would forgive him, German poet Heinrich Heine famously said on his deathbed “Dieu me pardonnera, c’est son metier.”  God will forgive me, that’s his job. I remember having a conversation over dinner one night at Out of the Cold with a group of people from different faith backgrounds.  Someone asked me what I thought about a gangster film they had seen recently.  One of the characters was a hitman who would go to confession after every hit, feeling absolved and going out to commit more hits.  What did I think about this?  It led to a good conversation about empty religious ritual, what God thought about empty religious ritual and what God wills in our lives.  The question is perhaps not as absurd as it may seem.

Paul had his detractors who claimed that he was leading people away from ethical lives by talking about all this grace, and he’s answering them.  What we do matters. “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?”  Paul answers the question in the same way he answers other rhetorical questions in his letter.  “By no means!  Of course not!  Certainly not! Heck naw! God forbid it!  May it never be!  Paul then stops.  He uses the question to examine just what it means to be in Christ.  For those of us in Christ, this is what it means. What does it mean to stand in the grace of grace, to be situated in the grace of Christ as we talked about last week?  For those of us who wonder just what it means to be in Christ and are hearing the invitation to come in, this is what it means.

It’s a big deal.  It’s serious.  When it comes to our behaviour it means the end of “The devil made me do it” or “Well you know that’s just my Irish (or fill in the blank) temper” or “Well you know I’m just a little rough around the edges” or “That’s just Sally being Sally” or “You know what he’s like” or any one of the number of thing we say to excuse bad behaviour. 

Paul will get to talking about behaviour, but he doesn’t start there.  He starts with Christ and who the follower of Christ is in Christ.  It’s about a transformation of the heart.  It is about moving from one realm to another.  Oftentimes we may think of Christians as a group of people who participate in the same traditions, believe the same things.  We do these things but let us not reduce our identity to those things.  Worse, we may conceive of Christians as a group of people who are defined by sharing the same values, or less positively as a group of people who are defined by what they don’t do.